• NUV
• soft robotic manipulation
• under actuate control
• underwater archaeology
• underwater biological sampling

In this thesis an under-actuated and compliant underwater gripper based on the Pisa/IIT SoftHand showing manipulation capabilities that are comparable to a scuba's real hand is designed and developed. This will enable using the SoftHand in several fine deepwater operations (as archaeological recovery and biological sampling) that can currently be performed only by human operators, exposing them to the risks of working in a hostile environment. The proposed underwater gripper is based on a modular watertight enclosure design with pressure compensation for the original SoftHand electronic, and features a magnetic drive coupling to transfer actuator torque to the wet hand fingers. Good manipulation performance is obtained with dexterity and force tasks during two underwater field experiments. Experimental validation for two different end-effectors is carried on, along with grasp force estimation and analysis.
A octopus-like underwater vehicle based on the developed gripper is then designed and simulated, which employ gripper fingers as tentacles for propulsion. A simple PID control for this under actuated, nonlinear nonholonomic vehicle (NUV) is implemented by taking advantage of dynamic synergies between tentacles as in the SoftHand-D.