Towards a robust system helping underwater archaeologists through the acquisition of geo-referenced optical and acoustic data

In the framework of the ARROWS project (September 2012 - August 2015), a venture funded by the European Commission, several modular Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUV) have been developed to the main purposes of mapping, diagnosing, cleaning, and securing underwater and coastal archaeological sites. These AUVs consist of modular mobile robots, designed and manufactured according to specific suggestions formulated by a pool of archaeologists featuring long-standing experience in the field of Underwater Cultural Heritage preservation. The vehicles are typically equipped with acoustic modems to communicate during the dive and with different payload devices to sense the environment. The selected sensors represent appealing choices to the oceanographic engineer since they provide complementary information about the surrounding environment. The main topics discussed in this paper concern (i) performing a systematic mapping of the marine seafloors, (ii) processing the output maps to detect and classify potential archaeological targets and finally (iii) developing dissemination systems with the purpose of creating virtual scenes as a photorealistic and informative representation of the surveyed underwater sites.