ARRC Seminar Series - Dr. Vincent Creuze

Of the two million shipwrecks that dot the seas of the world, many are lying beyond the scuba diving limits. These deep wrecks are remarkably well preserved because, until now, they have been protected from the main environmental and human threats (biofouling, shipworms, light, storms, strong tidal currents, looting…). Nowadays, they are no longer safe from being accidentally destroyed by deep fishing trawls or from being looted by the robots of deep-water treasure hunting companies. For these reasons, there is an urgent need to study them. Unfortunately, the manipulator arms and the tools of existing underwater robots (Workclass ROVs - Remotely Operated Vehicles) are designed for industrial infrastructures and cannot safely excavate a site or recover fragile archaeological artifacts without damage. For these reasons, over the past 10 years, a consortium led both by the French Department for Underwater Archaeological Research (DRASSM, Ministry of Culture) and Montpellier Laboratory of Computer Science, Robotics and Microelectronics (LIRMM), brought together several universities and industrial partners and developed original robotic approaches to perform effective archaeological studies and collect artifacts from depths ranging from 10 to 2,500 meters.

This talk will describe the context of deepwater archaeological intervention and will present the tools and methods we have developed for sensing and control of multipurpose underwater robots. The presentation will focus on underwater grasping devices (robotic hands, claws, and suction devices), robust control, coordination of robots, haptic feedback and vision-based methods for underwater localization and 3D modelling. This talk will be illustrated by several videos showing the field tests carried out during real archaeological campaigns.