Motion coordination and dexterous manipulation for underwater vehicle-manipulator systems

This paper addresses the redundancy resolution problem for underwater vehicle-manipulator systems (UVMSs). More specifically, a new redundancy resolution approach with motion coordination and dexterous manipulation is presented to guarantee the tracking accuracy of the end-effector while avoiding singular configurations of the manipulator. The task-priority redundancy resolution framework is adopted to achieve an effective coordinated motion of the vehicle and manipulator while exploiting the redundant degrees of freedom available. A dexterous manipulation task with low priority is proposed to reconfigure the UVMS into a more dexterous configuration by keeping the end-effector within the designed heuristic subset. An inequality-based singularity avoidance task is inserted into the redundancy resolution framework as a high-priority task to keep the measure of manipulability above a specified minimum value. Experimental results verify that the proposed approach significantly improves the dexterity and coordination of the UVMS.