Developing the Multilink Manipulator System for an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle

The article considers to development and integration of a multilink manipulator to AUV “MMT-3500” developed by Institute of Marine Technology Problems FEB RAS (Vladivostok, Russia). The manipulator is designed for collecting samples of marine organisms and bottom soil by the vehicle hovering over the object of the interests.A kinematic layout of the manipulator is proposed in the article. The layout provides control of the manipulator end-effector with given coordinates inside a working area of a computer vision system.The design overview and software control scheme of the manipulator are described in the article. The design overview of manipulator arms and it’s effectors are described and presented.