Objective The objective of the project is to demonstrate the possibility of improving the sampling and manipulation capabilities of underwater tele-operated or autonomous systems for industrial (e.g. maintenance operations), biological (e.g. sampling of animals) and archaeological (e.g. sampling of finds) applications. This will be done by using advanced grippers and manipulation control techniques. In particular, it is intended to explore the use of a tentacular flexible finger using hydraulics rather than pneumatics for underwater use. The expected achievements of the project are: - Design of a multifingered gripper, with tactile and force feedback sensing facilities that can operate underwater and are suitable for fitting to existing robot arms. - Development of methodologies for grasp planning and hybrid position/force control schemes. - Design of suitable simulation tools as support for both gripper design and analysis of the control schemes. - Design of computer control architectures to implement grasping control schemes. - Design of simple computer based man/machine interface for the supervision and control of grasping. - Demonstration of the underwater behavior of the gripper attached to an existing arm and the performance of the control schemes for a range of simple operations in a test tank. Fields of science natural sciencescomputer and information sciencessoftwaresoftware applicationssimulation software Programme(s) FP3-MAST 2 - Specific research and technological development programme (EEC) in the field of marine science and technology, 1990-1994 Topic(s) 0302 - Underwater acoustics Call for proposal Data not available Funding Scheme CSC - Cost-sharing contracts Coordinator UNIVERSITY OF GENOVA Address 13,via all'opera pia 13 16145 Genova Italy See on map EU contribution € 0,00 Participants (2) Sort alphabetically Sort by EU Contribution Expand all Collapse all Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR) Italy EU contribution € 0,00 Address Viale f.causa 18/r 16145 Genova See on map Heriot-Watt University United Kingdom EU contribution € 0,00 Address Riccarton, lord balerno building EH14 4AS Edinburgh See on map
