Abstract: It is challenging for underwater vehicle–manipulator systems (UVMSs) to operate autonomously in unstructured underwater environments. Relying solely on teleoperation for both underwater vehicle (UV) and underwater manipulator (UM) imposes a considerable cognitive and physical load on the operator. In this paper, we propose a unified shared control (USC) architecture for the UVMS, integrating divisible shared control (DSC) and interactive shared control (ISC) to alleviate the operator’s workload. By applying task priority based on DSC, we divide the whole-body task into constraints, operation, and posture optimization subtasks. The robot autonomously avoids self-collisions and adjusts its posture according to the user’s visual preferences. ISC incorporates haptic feedback to enhance human–robot collaboration, seamlessly integrating it into the operation task via a whole-body controller for the UVMS. Simulations and pool experiments are conducted to verify the feasibility of the method. Compared to manual control (MC), the proposed method reduces completion time by 17.50%, operator input length by 25.00%, and cognitive load by 35.53% in the simulations, with corresponding reductions of 22.73%, 40.00%, and 29.91% in the pool experiments. Subjective measurements demonstrate the reduction in operator workload with the proposed method.

Key words: Unified shared control; Underwater vehicle–manipulator system; Human–robot interaction; Task priority

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