Deliverable ISSIA 4.6 RITMARE

This work describes the experimentation of the new Unmanned Marine Vehicle e-URoPe developed by CNR-ISSIA with it's tool-sled and the various sensors and tools adopted. The vehicle itself is studied as an inspection vehicle but it can be equipped with different types of sensors in order to make it flexible and adaptable to various applications such as sampling of water or objects, underwater manipulation, cooperation with underwater operators or with other underwater vehicles, mapping of underwater ground and detection of vegetation lying on the seabed. In particular, this document describes the calibration of the e-URoPE + Tool-sled for the development of a new methodology for automatic detection and mapping of underwater vegetation by means of highly autonomous marine robotic platforms. The tool-sled is equipped with a multi-parametric sensors package, for the exploration and characterisation of sea-bottoms interested by the presence of the Posidonia oceanica seagrass, which represents a valuable indicator of the environmental health. The proposed methodology relies on the systematic exploration of the sea-bottom by means of the AUV/ROV acquiring acoustic data and video imagery of the seabed, in order to reconstruct a 2.5D model of the environment (i.e. an elevation map of the sea-bottom). The data collection is achieved by the employment of the single beam echo-logger for seabed range measurements and the down-looking Ethernet underwater camera.