TRIDENT An European project targeted to increase the autonomy levels for underwater intervention missions

TLDR

TRIDENT is a European project launched in March 2010 that develops autonomous marine robots for multipurpose underwater interventions, with applications ranging from archaeology to offshore industries, and earned an excellent grade after 36 months of work. This paper discusses the final achievements of TRIDENT, highlighting the consortium’s ongoing research efforts toward its ultimate objectives. TRIDENT’s approach employs advanced autonomous systems that surpass conventional manned or purpose‑built methods, as demonstrated in its recent developments. TRIDENT establishes a new benchmark by solving shallow‑water search and recovery with the highest autonomy achieved to date.

Abstract

TRIDENT is the official acronym used for a funded European project entitled: “Marine Robots and Dexterous Manipulation for Enabling Autonomous Underwater Multipurpose Intervention Missions”. This project has demonstrated a new approach for multipurpose underwater intervention tasks with diverse potential applications ranging from underwater archaeology and oceanography to the offshore industries. The methods and technologies defined and tested under TRIDENT go beyond present-day methods typically based on manned or purpose-built systems. The project was launched on 1st of March 2010 and has been running for a total of 36 months, achieving the “excellent” grade in its final review process by the European Commission (May 2013, UJI, Spain). In this paper the last achievements will be discussed, highlighting the main research efforts continuously supported by the consortium till reach its final objectives. In summary, TRIDENT represents a new benchmark for the scientific community, solving the underwater “search & recovery” problem, in shallow water conditions, with the highest level of autonomy ever seen before.