The long term of this ongoing research has to do with increasing the autonomy levels for underwater intervention missions. Bearing in mind that the specific mission to face has been the intervention on a panel, in this paper some results in different development stages are presented by using the real mechatronics and the panel mockup. Furthermore, some details are highlighted describing two methodologies implemented for the required visually-guided manipulation algorithms, and also a roadmap explaining the different testbeds used for experimental validation, in increasing complexity order, are presented. It is worth mentioning that the aforementioned results would be impossible without previous generated know-how for both, the complete developed mechatronics for the autonomous underwater vehicle for intervention, and the required 3D simulation tool. In summary, thanks to the implemented approach, the intervention system is able to control the way in which the gripper approximates and manipulates the two panel devices (i.e. a valve and a connector) in autonomous manner and, results in different scenarios demonstrate the reliability and feasibility of this autonomous intervention system in water tank and pool conditions.