Ariel Explores: Vision-based underwater exploration and inspection via generalist drone-level autonomy

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Singh, Mohit, Dharmadhikari, Mihir, Alexis, Kostas
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Singh, Mohit
Dharmadhikari, Mihir
Alexis, Kostas
author_facet Singh, Mohit
Dharmadhikari, Mihir
Alexis, Kostas
contents This work presents a vision-based underwater exploration and inspection autonomy solution integrated into Ariel, a custom vision-driven underwater robot. Ariel carries a $5$ camera and IMU based sensing suite, enabling a refraction-aware multi-camera visual-inertial state estimation method aided by a learning-based proprioceptive robot velocity prediction method that enhances robustness against visual degradation. Furthermore, our previously developed and extensively field-verified autonomous exploration and general visual inspection solution is integrated on Ariel, providing aerial drone-level autonomy underwater. The proposed system is field-tested in a submarine dry dock in Trondheim under challenging visual conditions. The field demonstration shows the robustness of the state estimation solution and the generalizability of the path planning techniques across robot embodiments.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2507_10003
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Ariel Explores: Vision-based underwater exploration and inspection via generalist drone-level autonomy
Singh, Mohit
Dharmadhikari, Mihir
Alexis, Kostas
Robotics
This work presents a vision-based underwater exploration and inspection autonomy solution integrated into Ariel, a custom vision-driven underwater robot. Ariel carries a $5$ camera and IMU based sensing suite, enabling a refraction-aware multi-camera visual-inertial state estimation method aided by a learning-based proprioceptive robot velocity prediction method that enhances robustness against visual degradation. Furthermore, our previously developed and extensively field-verified autonomous exploration and general visual inspection solution is integrated on Ariel, providing aerial drone-level autonomy underwater. The proposed system is field-tested in a submarine dry dock in Trondheim under challenging visual conditions. The field demonstration shows the robustness of the state estimation solution and the generalizability of the path planning techniques across robot embodiments.
title Ariel Explores: Vision-based underwater exploration and inspection via generalist drone-level autonomy
topic Robotics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.10003