Controlling the manipulator of an underwater ROV using a coarse calibrated pan/tilt camera

We present a vision-based method to control the displacement of robot arm mounted on an underwater remotely operated vehicle (ROV). A closed-loop system based on an eye-to-hand visual servoing approach has been designed to achieve this task. We show that, using such an approach, the measuring of the manipulator motion with proprioceptive sensors is not required to precisely control the end-effector motion. To maintain the end effector in the field of view, the camera orientation is also controlled. The results presented show the validity of the approach.

1 Introduction

In this paper we present a vision-based method to control the manipulator of the Victor 6000 ROV. Victor 6000 [11] is a deep underwater ROV, built and operated by Ifremer, used for the exploration of the ocean floors. It is a cabled vehicle which is controlled from a support vessel and is designed to make optical surveys and to carry out local assignments for imagery, implementing instrumentation and sampling water, sediments or rocks. Figure 1: The Ifremer Victor 6000 underwater ROV (© Ifremer)