Abstract
The research carried out in the scope of this doctorate degree aims to develop innovativetechniques to improve the collection of biological and mineral samples underwaterusing robotic manipulators. The end goal is to enhance the handling by robotic means inorder tomaximise sample quality provided to marine scientists. The proposed techniquesare based on an in-depth analysis of the robotic arm actuators used in most recent underwaterintervention vehicles, in order to improve the accuracy of the positionning of thetools held by the manipulator arms. An instrumented tool has also been developed withthe aim to measure the reaction forces and adapt the interaction between the arm’s endeffectorand its environment to improve samples handling. These methods and the othercontributions described in this thesis have been experimentally validated using Ifremer’shybrid-ROV Ariane equipped with two electrically actuated heterogeneous robotic arms.