Manipulating to see better: sensing for underwater inspection with manipulation

Senior Lecturer

Don Dansereau

University of Sydney

How can we manipulate / interact with objects to gather more useful information? This arises in the underwater domain in the form of surface fouling, and in air in the form of corrosion and vegetation visually taking over surfaces requiring inspection.

There is a strong coupling between what the manipulator does and what the robot sees. In a sense, the camera and the manipulator are part of one interface between the robot and the world.

• Designing sensing and manipulation payloads so sensing and manipulation can work together to better achieve sensing, manipulation, and high-level tasks like mapping and change detection.
• Designing manipulation and sensing behaviours that allow these modes to work together, e.g., mechanically probing a surface and watching its response visually to understand degree of fouling; or jointly defouling and mapping a hull, producing both pre- and post-defouling maps in one pass.
• Interfacing with the planning-focused aspects of the project, see Project