CADDY - Cognitive Autonomous Diving Buddy: Two Years of Underwater Human-Robot Interaction

Divers operate in harsh and poorly monitored environments, in which the slightest unexpected disturbance, technical malfunction, or lack of attention can have catastrophic consequences. Motivated by these considerations, the “CADDY — Cognitive Autonomous Diving Buddy” FP7 project sets forth the main goal of developing a cooperative autonomous underwater robotic system to monitor and assist human divers, thus affording them increased levels of safety during the execution of challenging scientific and commercial missions. This article presents the main results obtained in the first 2 years of the project along the following main research topics: Seeing the Diver, where the focus is placed on the 3D reconstruction of a diver’s model (pose estimation and recognition of hand gestures) through remote and local sensing technologies, thus enabling behavior interpretation ; Understanding the Diver, with the objective of interpreting the model and physiological measurements of the diver in order to determine what can be called the state of the diver ; and Diver-Robot Cooperation and Control, aimed at investigating the interaction of the diver with underwater vehicles endowed with rich sensory motor skills, focusing on cooperative control and optimal formation with the diver as an integral part of the overall vehicle-diver formation.