Cutting-edge underwater robotics - CADDY project challenges, results and future steps

This paper describes results from the EU research project CADDY on cognitive autonomous robotics to support divers. The robot communicates with the diver by understanding gestures and acknowledges by light signals and task execution. Validation trials showed feasibility of the approach. In order to successfully achieve these beyond-the-state-of-the-art objectives, a number of specific features and functionalities have been designed and developed from scratch, integrated in the overall CADDY architecture and finally tested for validation. This paper focuses on the development on some of the game-changing techniques needed to face the scientific challenges of the projects.