Underwater Robot Manipulation: Advances, Challenges and Prospective Ventures

TL;DR

This paper reviews recent advances, challenges, and future research directions in underwater robot manipulation, emphasizing the technical and environmental hurdles faced by autonomous underwater vehicles and proposing avenues for enhancing their autonomy.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive discussion on current research limitations and identifies promising research directions to improve autonomous underwater manipulation capabilities.

Findings

Identification of key challenges in underwater manipulation

Analysis of environmental factors affecting robot stability

Proposals for future research to enhance autonomy

Abstract

Underwater manipulation is one of the most remarkable ongoing research subjects in robotics. \acp{I-AUV} not only have to cope with the technical challenges associated with traditional manipulation tasks but do so while currents and waves perturb the stability of the vehicle, and low-light, turbid water conditions impede perceiving the surroundings. Certainly, the dynamic nature and our limited understanding of the marine environment hinder the autonomous performance of underwater robot manipulation. This manuscript provides a discussion on previous research and the limiting factors that impose on the long-envisioned prospects of autonomous underwater manipulation to finally highlight research directions that have the potential to improve the autonomy capabilities of I-AUV.