Controlling Ocean One

Abstract

Using robots to explore venues that are beyond human reach has been a longstanding aspiration of scientists and expeditionists alike. The deep sea exemplifies such an unchartered environment that is currently inaccessible to humans. Ocean One (O) is an anthropomorphic underwater robot, designed to operate in deep aquatic conditions and equipped with an array of sensor modalities. Central to the O concept is a human interface that connects the robot and human operator through haptics and vision. In this paper, we focus on O ’s control architecture and show how it enables an avatar-like synergy between the robot and human pilot. We establish functional autonomy by resolving kinematic and actuation redundancy, allowing the pilot to control O in a lower-dimensional space. We illustrate O ’s hierarchical whole-body control tasks including manipulation and posture tasks, feed-forward compensation as well as constraint handling. We also describe how to coordinate the dynamics of body and arms to achieve superior performance in contact and demonstrate O ’s capabilities in simulation, experiments in the pool as well as deployment to its archeological maiden mission to the ‘Lune’, a French naval vessel that sunk to 91 m depth in 1664 in the mediterranean sea.