Robust trajectory control of underwater vehicles

underwater vehicles present difficult control-system design problems due to their nonlinear dynamics, uncertain models, and the presence of disturbances that are difficult to measure or estimate. In this paper, a recent extension of sliding mode control is shown to handle these problems effectively. The method deals directly with nonlinearities, is highly robust to imprecise models, explicitly accounts for the presence of high-frequency unmodeled dynamics, and produces designs that are easy to understand. Using a nonlinear vehicle simulation, the relationship between model uncertainty and performance is examined. The results show that adequate controllers can be designed using simple nonlinear models, but that performance improves as model uncertainty is decreased and the improvements can be predicted quantitatively.     

Robust coordinated motion control of an underwater vehicle-manipulator system with minimizing restoring moments

For autonomous manipulation in water, an underwater vehicle-manipulator system (UVMS) should be able to generate trajectori9es for the vehicle and manipulators and track the planned trajectories accurately. In this paper, for trajectory generation, we suggest a performance index for redundancy resolution. This index is designed to minimize the restoring moments of the UVMS during manipulation, and it is optimized without impeding the performance of a given task. As a result, the restoring moments of the UVMS are decreased, and control efforts are also reduced. For tracking control of the UVMS, a nonlinear H_∞ optimal control with disturbance observer is proposed. This control is robust against parameter uncertainties, external disturbances, and actuator nonlinearities. Numerical simulations are presented to demonstrate the performance of the proposed coordinated motion control of the UVMS. The results show that control inputs for tracking are reduced, and the UVMS can successfully track generated trajectories.     

Nonlinear adaptive control of an underwater towed vehicle

This paper addresses the problem of simultaneous depth tracking and attitude control of an underwater towed vehicle. The system proposed uses a two-stage towing arrangement that includes a long primary cable, a gravitic depressor, and a secondary cable. The towfish motion induced by wave driven disturbances in both the vertical and horizontal planes is described using an empirical model of the depressor motion and a spring-damper model of the secondary cable. A nonlinear, Lyapunov-based, adaptive output feedback control law is designed and shown to regulate pitch, yaw, and depth tracking errors to zero. The controller is designed to operate in the presence of plant parameter uncertainty. When subjected to bounded external disturbances, the tracking errors converge to a neighbourhood of the origin that can be made arbitrarily small. In the implementation proposed, a nonlinear observer is used to estimate the linear velocities used by the controller thus dispensing with the need for costly sensor suites. The results obtained with computer simulations show that the controlled system exhibits good performance about different operating conditions when subjected to sea-wave driven disturbances and in the presence of sensor noise. The system holds promise for application in oceanographic missions that require depth tracking or bottom-following combined with precise vehicle attitude control.     

Robust diving control of an AUV

Mobile systems traveling through a complex environment present major difficulties in determining accurate dynamic models. Autonomous underwater vehicle motion in ocean conditions requires investigation of new control solutions that guarantee robustness against external parameter uncertainty. A diving-control design, based on Lyapunov theory and back-stepping techniques, is proposed and verified. Using adaptive and switching schemes, the control system is able to meet the required robustness. The results of the control system are theoretically proven and simulations are developed to demonstrate the performance of the solutions proposed.     

Accurate and practical thruster modeling for underwater vehicles

The thruster is the crucial factor of an underwater vehicle system, because it is the lowest layer in the control loop of the system. In this paper, we propose an accurate and practical thrust modeling for underwater vehicles which considers the effects of ambient flow velocity and angle. In this model, the axial flow velocity of the thruster, which is non-measurable, is represented by ambient flow velocity and propeller shaft velocity. Hence, contrary to previous models, the proposed model is practical since it uses only measurable states. Next, the whole thrust map is divided into three states according to the state of ambient flow and propeller shaft velocity, and one of the borders of the states is defined as critical advance ratio (CAR). This classification explains the physical phenomenon of conventional experimental thrust maps. In addition, the effect of the incoming angle of ambient flow is analyzed, and Critical Incoming Angle (CIA) is also defined to describe the thrust force states. The proposed model is evaluated by comparing experimental data with numerical model simulation data, and it accurately covers overall flow conditions within ±2 N force error. The comparison results show that the new model's matching performance is significantly better than conventional models'.     

水下机器人运动的S面控制方法

由于水下机器人的强非线性以及系统存在不确定性，同时考虑到港湾环境下水声的噪声大，因此，水下机器人进行精确作业时的运动控制一直是其实用化过程中困扰人们的问题，通常水下机器人的控制方式有PID控制器，神经网络控制器和模糊逻辑控制器三种，但是，由于这三种方法在实际应用中都存在一些参数难以确定的缺陷，为了解决这一问题，本文从模糊逻辑控制方式出发，借鉴PID控制的结构形式，推导出一种全新而简单有效的控制方法，定义为S面控制法，从水下机器人的水池试验和海上实验来看，不论是定点的控制精度还是运动过程中的控制效果都较令人满意，尤其是在风浪，潮流都比较大的海上实验中得到验证，鲁帮性很好。     

Discrete time-delay control of an autonomous underwater vehicle: Theory and experimental results

A discrete time-delay control (DTDC) law for a general six degrees of freedom unsymmetric autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) is presented. Hydrodynamic parameters like added mass coefficients and drag coefficients, which are generally uncertain, are not required by the controller. This control law cancels the uncertainties in the AUV dynamics by direct estimation of the uncertainties using time-delay estimation technique. The discrete-time version of the time-delay control does not require the derivative of the system state to be measured or estimated, which is required by the continuous-time version of the controller. This particularly provides an advantage over continuous-time controller in terms of computational effort or availability of sensors for measuring state derivatives, i.e., linear and angular accelerations. Implementation issues for practical realization of the controller are discussed. Experiments on a test-bed AUV were conducted in depth, pitch, and yaw degrees of freedom. Results show that the proposed control law performs well in the presence of uncertainties.     

Design of wake-adapted contra-rotating propellers for high-speed underwater vehicles

Based on the lifting-surface vortex lattice model, a numerical design method of wake-adapted contra-rotating propellers (CRPs) for high-speed underwater vehicles is proposed. According to the given radial circulation distribution, the method can use prescribed camber line shapes to design maximum cambers and pitches of blade sections by controlling circulation at the leading edge, which makes the chordwise distribution of blade loading similar to that of NACA a = 0.8. It also can be performed under prescribed chordwise circulation distributions, where camber line shape and blade section pitch are designed. The Newton–Raphson iterative algorithm is utilised in the design of the pitch and camber. The radial circulation distribution of a set of CRPs for an underwater vehicle is used to redesign CRPs by the proposed method, and the design results are then validated via numerical simulations by solving the Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes equations. The results indicate that the proposed method is suitable for the design of CRPs with tapered hubs and skewed blades, and it also exhibits good mesh convergence. The CRPs designed with the given camber line shape and the given chordwise loading distribution both have relatively uniform pressure distributions, with the latter being superior.     

Autopilot control synthesis for path tracking maneuvers of underwater vehicles

This paper is concerned with the robust control synthesis of autonomous underwater vehicle(AUV) for general path following maneuvers.First,we present maneuvering kinematics and vehicle dynamics in a unified framework.Based on H∞ loop-shaping procedure,the 2-DOF autopilot controller has been presented to enhance stability and path tracking.By use of model reduction,the high-order control system is reduced to one with reasonable order,and further the scaled low-order controller has been analyzed in both the frequency and the time domains.Finally,it is shown that the autopilot control system provides robust performance and stability against prescribed levels of uncertainty.     

A hierarchical real-time control architecture for a semi-autonomous underwater vehicle

This paper describes a real-time control architecture for Dual Use Semi-Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (DUSAUV), which has been developed at Korea Research Institute of Ships and Ocean Engineering (KRISO) for being a test-bed of development of underwater navigation and manipulator technologies. DUSAUV has three built-in computers, seven thrusters for six DOF motion control, one 4-function electric manipulator, one ballasting motor, built-in power source, and various sensors. A supervisor control system with GUI and a multi-purpose joystick is mounted on the surface vessel and communicates with vehicle through a fiber optic link. Furthermore, QNX, one of real-time operating system, is ported on the built-in control and navigation computers for real-time control purpose, while Microsoft OS product is ported in the supervisor computer for GUI programming convenience. A hierarchical control architecture, which consists of application layer, real-time layer and physical layer, has been developed for efficient control system of above complex underwater robotic system. The experimental results with implementation of the layered control architecture for various motion control of DUSAUV in an ocean engineering basin of KRISO is also presented.     

Adaptive optimal control of an autonomous underwater vehicle in the dive plane using dorsal fins

In this paper, adaptive control of low speed bio-robotic autonomous underwater vehicles (BAUVs) in the dive plane using dorsal fins is considered. It is assumed that the model parameters are completely unknown and only the depth of the vehicle is measured for feedback. Two dorsal fins are mounted in the horizontal plane on either side of the BAUV. The normal force produced by the fins, when cambered, is used for the maneuvering. The BAUV model considered here is non-minimum phase. An indirect adaptive control system is designed for the depth control using the dorsal fins. The control system consists of a gradient based identifier for online parameter estimation, an observer for state estimation, and an optimal controller. Simulation results are presented which show that the adaptive control system accomplishes precise depth control of the BAUV using dorsal fins in spite of large uncertainties in the system parameters.     

A chattering-free sliding-mode controller for underwater vehicles with fault-tolerant infinity-norm thrust allocation

There are two objectives to this paper. First, a chattering-free sliding-mode controller is proposed for the trajectory control of remotely operated vehicles (ROVs). Second, a new approach for thrust allocation is proposed that is based on minimizing the largest individual component of the thrust manifold. With regards to the former, a new adaptive term is developed that eliminates the high-frequency control action inherent in a conventional sliding-mode controller. As opposed to the common adaptive approach, the new adaptive term does not require the linearity condition on the dynamic parameters and the creation of a regressor matrix. In addition, it removes the need for a priori knowledge of upper bounds on uncertainties in the dynamic parameters of the ROV. With regards to the latter, it is demonstrated that minimizing the l_∞ norm (infinity-norm) of the thrust manifold ensures low individual thruster forces. The new control and thrust allocation concepts are implemented in numerical simulations of a work class ROV, and the chattering-free nature of the controller is demonstrated during typical ROV manoeuvres. In the simulation studies, the l_∞ norm-based thrust allocation problem is cast as a linear programming problem that allows direct incorporation of the thruster saturation limits and a fault-tolerant property. To achieve real-time solution rates for the l_∞ norm-based thrust allocation problem, a recurrent neural network is designed. In the simulation studies, the l_∞ norm-based thrust allocation provides smaller maximum absolute value of the largest component of the thrust manifold than that of a conventional l₂ norm (2-norm) minimization, satisfies the saturation limits of each thruster, and accommodates faults that are introduced arbitrarily during the manoeuvre.     

Neural adaptive robust control of underactuated marine surface vehicles with input saturation

This paper proposes a saturated tracking controller for underactuated autonomous marine surface vehicles with limited torque. First, a second-order open-loop error dynamic model is developed in the actuated degrees of freedom to simplify the design procedure. Then, a saturated tracking controller is designed by utilizing generalized saturation functions to reduce the risk of actuator saturation. This, in turn, improves the transient performance of the control system. A multi-layer neural network and adaptive robust control techniques are also employed to preserve the controller robustness against unmodeled dynamics and environmental disturbances induced by waves and ocean currents. A Lyapunov stability analysis shows that all signals of the closed-loop system are bounded and tracking errors are semi-globally uniformly ultimately bounded. Finally, simulation results are provided for a hovercraft vehicle to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed controller as a qualified candidate for real implementations in offshore applications.     

Robust and adaptive path following for underactuated autonomous underwater vehicles

This paper proposes a nonlinear robust adaptive control strategy to force a six degrees of freedom underactuated underwater vehicle with only four actuators to follow a predefined path at a desired speed despite of the presence of environmental disturbances and vehicle’s unknown physical parameters. The proposed controller is designed using Lyapunov’s direct method, the popular backstepping and parameter projection techniques. The closed loop path following errors can be made arbitrarily small. Interestingly, it is shown that our developed control strategy is easily extendible to situations of practical importance such as parking and point-to-point navigation. Numerical simulations are provided to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed methodology.     

Dynamics and control of a towed underwater vehicle system, part I: model development

Autonomous vehicles are being developed to replace the conventional, manned surface vehicles that tow mine hunting towed platforms. While a wide body of work exists that describes numerical models of towed systems, they usually include relatively simple models of the towed bodies and neglect the dynamics of the towing vehicle. For systems in which the mass of the towing vehicle is comparable to that of the towed vehicle, it becomes important to consider the dynamics of both vehicles. In this work, we describe the development of a numerical model that accurately captures the dynamics of these new mine hunting systems. We use a lumped mass approximation for the towcable and couple this model to non-linear numerical models of an autonomous surface vehicle and an actively controlled towfish. Within the dynamics models of the two vehicles, we include non-linear controllers to allow accurate maneuvering of the towed system.     

Dynamics and control of towed underwater vehicle system, part II: model validation and turn maneuver optimization

This paper presents a validation of a three-dimensional dynamics model of a towed underwater vehicle system and discusses an application of the model to improve the performance of the system during a turn maneuver. The model was validated by comparing its results to experimental sea trial data, as well as to results from another independently developed simulation. The dynamics model was then imbedded in an optimization routine. This routine was used to vary turn radii in order to improve the U-turn performance. Significant improvements were obtained relative to a standard semicircular turn geometry.     

Depth-trim mapping control of underwater vehicle with fins

Underwater vehicle plays an important role in ocean engineering.Depth control by fin is one of the difficulties for underwater vehicle in motion control.Depth control is indirect due to the freedom coupling between trim and axial motion.It includes the method of dynamic analysis and lift-resistance-coefficient experiment and theory algorithm.By considering the current speed and depth deviation,comprehensive interpretation is used in object-planning instruction.Expected depth is transformed into expected trim.Dynamic output fluctuation can be avoided,which is caused by linear mapping of deviation.It is steady and accurate for the motion of controlled underwater vehicles.The feasibility and efficiency of the control method are testified in the pool and natural area for experiments.     

Design and implementation of time efficient trajectories for autonomous underwater vehicles

This paper discusses control strategies adapted for practical implementation and efficient motion of autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs). For AUVs we would like efficiency in both the measured time and the energy consumption, the mission dictating the weight to put on each of these cost. As a first approach to this problem, we focus in this paper on time minimization. Based on the structure of the time optimal trajectories and of the pure motions, we develop an algorithm to design time efficient trajectories corresponding to piecewise constant thrust arcs with few actuator switchings. We do that by solving a new optimization problem where the unknowns are the time period between two actuator switchings as well as the values of the constant thrust arcs. We apply a direct method to compute the solutions numerically. With our algorithm, we gain considerable computational time. Moreover, with as few as three actuator switchings, the duration of our trajectories is within 10% of the optimal trajectories. Since our control strategies have a simple structure they can be implemented on a test-bed vehicle. For the experiments displayed in this paper we use a spherical underwater vehicle which exhibits with almost no preference of direction or orientation for movement; this gives us a very controllable and versatile vehicle.     

开架式水下机器人运动的模糊非线性PD控制方法

由于水下机器人系统的非线性动力学特性和工作环境的复杂性和不确定性,如何更好地设计水下机器人作业时的运动控制器一直是其实用化过程中没能得到很好解决的问题。结合模糊逻辑和S面控制,利用T—S推理结构,设计了一种兼具局部和全局调整功能的模糊非线性PD(m)控制器,仿真结果表明,其控制效果要优于采用单一控制参数的S面控制器。     

Experiments on vision guided docking of an autonomous underwater vehicle using one camera

This paper introduces an underwater docking procedure for the test-bed autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) platform called ISiMI using one charge-coupled device (CCD) camera. The AUV is optically guided by lights mounted around the entrance of a docking station and a vision system consisting of a CCD camera and a frame grabber in the AUV. This paper presents an image processing procedure to identify the dock by discriminating between light images, and proposes a final approach algorithm based on the vision guidance. A signal processing technique to remove noise on the defused grabbed light images is introduced, and a two-stage final approach for stable docking at the terminal instant is suggested. A vision-guidance controller was designed with conventional PID controllers for the vertical plane and the horizontal plane. Experiments were conducted to demonstrate the effectiveness of the vision-guided docking system of the AUV.