Return to Antikythera: Multi-session SLAM Based AUV Mapping of a First Century B.C. Wreck Site

This paper describes an expedition to map a first century B.C. ship wreck off the coast of the Greek island of Antikythera using an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) equipped with a high resolution stereo imaging system. The wreck, first discovered in 1900, has yielded a wealth of important historical artefacts from two previous interventions, including the renowned Antikythera mechanism. The deployments described in this paper aimed to map the current state of the wreck site prior to further excavation. Over the course of 10 days of operation, the AUV completed multiple dives over the main wreck site and other nearby targets of interest. This paper describes the motivation for returning to the wreck and producing a detailed map, gives an overview of the techniques used for multi-session Simultaneous Localisation and Mapping (SLAM) to stitch data from two dives into a single, composite map of the site and presents preliminary results of the mapping exercise.