Grasper HIL simulation towards autonomous manipulation of an underwater panel in a permanent observatory

This paper explains how the autonomous grasp of a valve situated in a permanent underwater observatory is performed, using camera and laser sensors. The experiment has been performed within the benchmarking UWSim Underwater Simulator [1][4], which makes it possible to test the hardware ROS (Robot Operating System) interfaces in a simulated environment, which can be directly applied to the real robot later on. This architecture enables the design of Hardware-In-the-Loop (HIL) experiments, which has been shown to be very useful, especially when integrating components of several partners in complex research projects.