Hierarchical Topology-Aware Planning and Control of Underwater Vehicle-Manipulator Systems in Confined Environments

Abstract

This paper addresses autonomous intervention with an underwater vehicle--manipulator system (UVMS) in confined, cluttered, and partially known environments, where poor maneuverability, narrow passages, and uncertain execution may cause the robot to enter unrecoverable regions. We propose MANTA, a three-layer hierarchical planning-and-control framework that couples passage accessibility, manipulation feasibility, and closed-loop execution. The first layer performs global connectivity reasoning in a conservative reduced base space to extract traversable corridor candidates toward the task region. The second layer refines each candidate corridor by jointly optimizing the continuous base motion and arm trajectory, producing a collision-free base--arm trajectory. The third layer learns a reach-and-hold base policy using Gaussian-process model-based reinforcement learning (MBRL) through MC-PILCO, enabling trajectory tracking and station keeping at the planned manipulation state. During execution, the framework monitors map updates and can trigger recovery and route repair when the active passage becomes infeasible. MANTA is evaluated in confined UVMS planning and closed-loop tracking experiments. Across 120 matched planning queries, it achieves higher task success than full-state sampling-based baselines while producing larger clearance margins and lower arm motion. The learned MC-PILCO policy further reduces position and yaw tracking errors on both training and unseen tube-like references. These results show MANTA as a structured and data-efficient framework for safe autonomous underwater intervention in caves, tubes, and cluttered subsea structures.