Mobile UnderSEA HAND for whole hand robust grasping – SEAHAND

The SEAHAND project aims at developing a new paradigm of manipulator for the excavation of deep sea archaeological sites or shipwrecks (up to 2000 meters deep). In fact, we propose a mobile adaptive grasper, carried by a very small fully actuated underwater vehicle. This approach will allow remote manipulation of delicate objects, providing force feedback along all degrees of freedom (including the squeezing force along each finger). The design of the hand and the vehicle will be conducted together by the involved partners, taking into account the constraints impose by the force-feedback control approach. The result will be an innovative mobile grasper allowing archaeologists to handle very fragile artefacts under very high water pressure (200 bars). The force feedback will allow safe excavation of the objects and will contribute to preserve their integrity.
The joint action of specialists of all the concerned fields (design of underwater vehicles and robotics hands, remote manipulation in nuclear environment, control), associated with the expertise of world renowned underwater archaeologists, will allow the development of a relevant industrial prototype, that will be validated during real field tests.