Sea Mining Exploration With an UVMS: Experimental Validation of the Control and Perception Framework

The article discusses the main methodologies and key technologies behind the ROBUST project, funded by the European Union within the Horizon 2020 framework, whose goal is the development of an autonomous underwater vehicle manipulator system for deep sea mining exploration. This article focuses on the developed control and perception framework and related mechatronics, and presents the experimental results from the sea trials in Sardinia, Italy, supporting the proposed methodologies.