Manipulator Arm Interactive Control in Unknown Underwater Environment

With the rapid development of robot technology, robots nowadays are gradually used in complex or inaccessible environments. Usually robots are program controlled to execute grabbing tasks, which however has many limits, especially in the underwater environment. In this paper an interactive manipulator arm control system based on 3D vision sensor in unknown underwater environment is introduced. The operator's arm action can be mapped to the manipulator arm through a virtual manipulator arm on a computer screen. The spatial position of object can be determined through the underwater vision sensor which is mounted on the manipulator arm. The manipulator arm approaches and grabs the object by recognizing and mapping the joint angles received from operator's arm. In this process, the virtual manipulator arm and underwater scene with object are displayed on the interactive interface and meanwhile the operator can analyze the environment situation and make a global decision for manipulator arm's further action. The results corroborate the validity of the proposed approach for manipulator arm control.