  In an effort to lower the barrier to entry in underwater manipulation, this
paper presents an open-source, user-friendly framework for bimanual
teleoperation of a light-duty underwater vehicle-manipulator system (UVMS).
This framework allows for the control of the vehicle along with two
manipulators and their end-effectors using two low-cost haptic devices.
  The UVMS kinematics are derived in order to create an independent resolved
motion rate controller for each manipulator, which optimally controls the joint
positions to achieve a desired end-effector pose. This desired pose is computed
in real-time using a teleoperation controller developed to process the dual
haptic device input from the user. A physics-based simulation environment is
used to implement this framework for two example tasks as well as provide data
for error analysis of user commands. The first task illustrates the
functionality of the framework through motion control of the vehicle and
manipulators using only the haptic devices. The second task is to grasp an
object using both manipulators simultaneously, demonstrating precision and
coordination using the framework. The framework code is available at
https://github.com/stevens-armlab/uvms_bimanual_sim.
