The Italian project SUONO: preliminary results on underwater manipulation tasks

The demanded tasks for sub-sea operations have become progressively challenging as, for instance, intervention, maintenance and repair of seabed installations for the offshore industry. Motivated by these considerations, this paper presents an overview of the Italian SUONO (Safe Underwater Operations iN Oceans) project, which involves the Department of Industrial Engineering (DIEF) of the University of Florence, a node of the Italian Research Center on Integrated System for the Marine Environment (ISME), Italy, and four other Italian partners, from Academia as well as Industry. More in detail, the SUONO project aims to integrate technologies and methodologies to enable the development of autonomous underwater robotic systems employ- able for intervention activities, such as free-floating manipulation tasks on a sub-sea panel.