Underwater vehicle-manipulator systems (UVMSs) are underwater robots equipped with one or more manipulators to perform intervention missions. This paper provides the mechanical, electrical, and software designs of a novel UVMS equipped with a continuum manipulator, referred to as a continuum-UVMS. A kinematic model for the continuum-UVMS is derived in order to build an algorithm to resolve the robot's redundancy and generate joint space commands. Different methods to optimize the trajectory for specific tasks are proposed using both the weighted least norm solution and the gradient projection method. Kinematic simulation results are analyzed to assess the performance of the proposed algorithm. Finally, the continuum-UVMS is deployed in an experimental demonstration in which autonomous control is tested for a given reference trajectory.

翻译：水下机器人-机械臂系统（UVMS）是一种配备一个或多个机械臂以执行干预任务的水下机器人。本文介绍了一种新型连续体机械臂UVMS（称为连续体-UVMS）的机械、电气及软件设计。推导了连续体-UVMS的运动学模型，以构建解决机器人冗余性并生成关节空间指令的算法。提出了利用加权最小范数解和梯度投影法优化特定任务轨迹的不同方法。分析了运动学仿真结果以评估所提算法的性能。最后，在实验演示中部署了连续体-UVMS，测试了给定参考轨迹下的自主控制能力。