Visual Telepresence for Underwater Manipulation

Abstract This article presents a novel telepresence system equipped on the remotely operated vehicle to enhance underwater manipulation capabilities. We achieve this by combining a waterproof camera with a multi-degrees-of-freedom underwater manipulator, which provides competitive mobility and flexibility compared to the conventional visual feedback method based on an on-vehicle camera. The suggested method solves the problem of view selection and adjustment; however, it cannot eliminate the visual jitter as it is impossible to keep a floating vehicle position and the pose change of the vehicle immediately delivered to the camera arm. Therefore, we propose a kinematic control law based on the null-space-based framework to coordinate the arm-based camera motion with the manipulation task performed with the operating arm. This underwater vision enhancement technology only needs the desired pose of the end camera to automatically calculate the suitable configuration of the camera arm, which reduces the burden on the operator and allows the operator to concentrate on the operation task. We also extended the method to meet three common underwater operation scenarios. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed telepresence system performs remarkably well in reducing view jitter and maintaining field-of-view (FOV) stability, establishing it as a viable option for inspection and maintenance applications.