ABSTRACT
The underwater environment is one of the most challenging for autonomous vehicles to operate in. As a consequence, in the last decades, industry and research communities showed an ever growing interest in the development of cost-effective Unmanned Underwater Vehicles (UUVs) (Yuh 2000). Among UUVs classes, Remotely Operated Vehicles (ROVs) represent a widespread and commonly used solution. Since the ’50s ROVs have been employed for military purposes, especially
by the British and American navies, due to their capabilities to recover torpedoes, mines, and even nuclear devices (Matika and Koroman 2001). In the present days, ROVs show their usefulness also in many civil operations such as monitoring submarine oil plants (Salgado 2010) and inspecting dams (Battle et al. 2003), wrecks, and submarines (Nornes et al. 2015).
