As underwater operation equipment, autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) have received widespread attention in the trend of unmanned and intelligent operations. They play an increasingly important role in offshore oil exploration, underwater rescue, military reconnaissance, seabed salvage, and marine scientific research. The research and application of AUVs is a systematic … [Read more...] about An Unmanned Surface Vehicle for the Launch and Recovery of Autonomous Underwater Vehicles: A Novel Design
Task analysis
Opportunistic (Re)planning for Long-Term Deep-Ocean Inspection: An Autonomous Underwater Architecture
Robots are increasingly used in subsea environments because of their positive impact on human safety and operational capabilities in the deep ocean. However, achieving full autonomy remains challenging because of the extreme conditions they encounter. In this context, we propose an autonomous underwater architecture for long-term deep-ocean inspection that robustly plans … [Read more...] about Opportunistic (Re)planning for Long-Term Deep-Ocean Inspection: An Autonomous Underwater Architecture
A Nitinol-Embedded Wearable Soft Robotic Gripper for Deep-Sea Manipulation: A Wearable Device for Deep-Sea Delicate Operation
Soft robotic gripper systems that can safely and nondestructively collect biological and artifact samples and perform deep-sea manipulation tasks are essential for deep-sea science and engineering applications. In this article, we implement a soft robotic gripper composed of nitinol-embedded soft fingers and an in situ wearable mechanism, which allows the soft gripper to be put … [Read more...] about A Nitinol-Embedded Wearable Soft Robotic Gripper for Deep-Sea Manipulation: A Wearable Device for Deep-Sea Delicate Operation
WaterFormer: A Global–Local Transformer for Underwater Image Enhancement With Environment Adaptor
Underwater image enhancement (UIE) is crucial for high-level vision in underwater robotics. While convolutional neural networks (CNNs) have made significant achievements in UIE, the locality of convolution poses a challenge in capturing the global context. In contrast, transformer-based networks, adept at handling long-range dependencies, have shown promise in various vision … [Read more...] about WaterFormer: A Global–Local Transformer for Underwater Image Enhancement With Environment Adaptor
Structured Ecological Cultivation With Autonomous Robots in Agriculture: Toward a Fully Autonomous Robotic Indoor Farming System
To support the hypothesis that embracing robotics has the potential to address farming challenges and, at the same time, replace large and complex farm machinery, this article proposes designing a farm around a heterogeneous robotic system dubbed Structured Ecological Cultivation With Autonomous Robots in Agriculture (SPECULARIA). This multirobot system has mobile robots … [Read more...] about Structured Ecological Cultivation With Autonomous Robots in Agriculture: Toward a Fully Autonomous Robotic Indoor Farming System