Underwater Robotics for Diver Operations Support: The CADDY Project

This paper describes the EU project "CADDY - Cognitive Autonomous Diving Buddy" which aims at developing a cooperative autonomous underwater robotic system to improve monitoring, assistance, and safety of the diver's operations. The paper presents key results related to the gesture recognition system, developed to enhance the interaction between diver and robot, and autonomous functionalities provided by the robotic framework to support the diver operations. Some experimental results obtained by field trials are also reported.