Underwater radio frequency based localization and image transmission system, including specific compression techniques, for autonomous manipulation

Autonomous manipulation in real underwater environments presents many unexpected situations, such as lack of visibility due to light reflections or presence of particles in the water. Moreover, the use of cameras is still very important, considering that they provide a natural sensor input to the operator, and many robust and efficient underwater manipulation algorithms have been implemented using this kind of sensor. Moreover, underwater applications, especially the ones that may involve interacting with artificial structures like panels, or even with other robots, would be very much improved if the umbilical cable could be substituted by a wireless system, improving so mobility. In that sense, Radio Frequency connection, allowing the transmission of camera input to the operator, would be a potential improvement. The present article describes the system implemented at the TRITON project (www.irs.uji.es/triton) in order to localize a robot arm related to a panel with a valve and a connector, using sonar and radiofrequency techniques, in order to experiment autonomous manipulation under lack of visibility conditions. Moreover, the Radio Frequency system enables the transmission of camera monitoring information at small distances, which has previously been compressed using specific techniques.