Page - 2 - in Proceedings of the OAGM&ARW Joint Workshop - Vision, Automation and Robotics

Recent Achievements in Underwater Intervention Systems the Role of Perception & Robotic Manipulation Pedro J. Sanz IRS-Lab, Universitat Jaume I, Spain Abstract From the UJI foundation (1991), one of the research fields more active has been robotics. So, a lot of different activities concerning this exciting field have been developed during these years. In addition, many projects, some of them funded by European and Spanish institutions have been successfully carried out. There are other robotic labs at UJI, but only one working in the underwater domain: IRS-Lab. Thus, after more than twenty years of research in some specific technologies (e.g. multisensory based manipulation, telerobotics, or human-robot interaction HRI), always applied to real life scenarios, a few years ago we face the underwater intervention context. In this new scenario the dream is named the underwater autonomous vehicle for intervention (I- AUV). However, a long path is still necessary to pave the way to underwater intervention applications performed in a complete autonomous way. This presentation reviews the difficults to overcome, the solutions explored and the evolution timeline in the way towards I-AUVs, putting the enphasis on the main contributions reached through those projects coordinated by the IRS-Lab, and always considering the role played by perception and manipulation there. 2