Nowadays, research in autonomous underwater manipulation has demonstrated simple\napplications like picking an object from the sea floor, turning a valve or plugging and unplugging a\nconnector. These are fairly simple tasks compared with those already demonstrated by the mobile\nrobotics community, which include, among others, safe arm motion within areas populated with a\npriori unknown obstacles or the recognition and location of objects based on their 3D model to grasp\nthem. Kinect-like 3D sensors have contributed significantly to the advance of mobile manipulation\nproviding 3D sensing capabilities in real-time at low cost. Unfortunately, the underwater robotics\ncommunity is lacking a 3D sensor with similar capabilities to provide rich 3D information of the\nwork space. In this paper, we present a new underwater 3D laser scanner and demonstrate its\ncapabilities for underwater manipulation. In order to use this sensor in conjunction with manipulators,\na calibration method to find the relative position between the manipulator and the 3D laser scanner\nis presented. Then, two different advanced underwater manipulation tasks beyond the state of\nthe art are demonstrated using two different manipulation systems. First, an eight Degrees of\nFreedom (DoF) fixed-base manipulator system is used to demonstrate arm motion within a work\nspace populated with a priori unknown fixed obstacles. Next, an eight DoF free floating Underwater\nVehicle-Manipulator System (UVMS) is used to autonomously grasp an object from the bottom of a\nwater tank.
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