TRIDENT: A Framework for Autonomous Underwater Intervention Missions with Dexterous Manipulation Capabilities

TRIDENT is a STREP project recently approved by the European Commission whose proposal was submitted to the ICT call 4 of the 7th Framework Program. The project proposes a new methodology for multipurpose underwater intervention tasks. To that end, a cooperative team formed with an Autonomous Surface Craft and an Intervention Autonomous Underwater Vehicle will be used. The proposed methodology splits the mission in two stages mainly devoted to survey and intervention tasks, respectively. The project brings together research skills specific to the marine environments in navigation and mapping for underwater robotics, multi-sensory perception, intelligent control architectures, vehicle-manipulator systems and dexterous manipulation. TRIDENT is a three years project and its start is planned by first months of 2010.