Benthos Sampling by Autonomous Underwater Vehicle Equipped a Manipulator with Suction Device

This research has developed AUV Tuna-Sand2 for wide area survey and benthos sampling to understand biological diversity for sustainable use of living marine resources. For evaluating sampling system of the AUV, the AUV was deployed at 100 m depth in Sagami bay of Japanese. The AUV which received image number of sampling target, returned to its photographing point, and started to search the target by the image processing. After finding the target, the AUV shifted to sampling altitude and succeeded in suction the shell using suctioning of mounted manipulator.