UNION: underwater intelligent operation and navigation

The main goal of the Union Esprit Basic Research Action is to develop methods for increasing the autonomy and intelligence of Underwater Remotely Operated Vehicles (Rov). The project focuses mainly on the development of coordinated control and sensing strategies for combined manipulator and vehicle systems. Both fundamental theories and methods for the design of these heterogeneous systems are investigated and concern: dynamic modeling and control for arm/base stabilization, use of sensory information (camera, sonars, lasers..) for pipeline inspection, navigation, programming, etc. Experimental and simulated results validated the theoretical developments. A complex canonical mission in the eld of ooshore Inspection Maintenance and Repair tasks was chosen to illustrate the integration of all the results. The Union project brings together seven European research groups working on underwater vehicles, robotics and intelligent sensing systems: RRsumm : Le projet Union nancc par le programme de recherche europen Esprit, a pour objectif d'augmenter l'autonomie des vhicules sous-marins ttlloprrs (Rov ou Remotely Operated Vehicle dans la terminologie anglo-saxone). Des probllmes de moddlisation dynamique et de com-mande pour la stabilisation du vhicule dott d'un bras manipulateur, d'utilisation d'informations capteurs (cammra, sonars, laser..) pour l'inspection de pipelines dans l'industrie ooshore, de navigation , de programmation, etc. ont tt traitts. Des rrsultats en simulation et sur sites exprimen-taux ont validd les ddveloppements thhoriques rralisss. L''tude d'une mission canonique complexe d'inspection et de rrparation de structures immergges telles que des pipelines dans l'industrie oo-shore illustre les possibilitts d'inttgration des rrsultats obtenus dans des missions oprationnelles. Le projet Union regroupe sept organismes de recherche europens : (1)Ifremer, Subsea Robo