Abstract
Underwater docking greatly facilitates and extends operation of an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) without the support of a surface vessel. Robust and accurate control is critically important for docking an AUV into a small underwater funnel-type dock station. In this paper, a docking system with an under-actuated AUV is presented, with special attention paid to control algorithm design and implementation. For an under-actuated AUV, the cross-track error can be controlled only via vehicle heading modulation, so both the cross-track error and heading error have to be constrained to achieve successful docking operations, while the control problem can be even more complicated in practical scenarios with the presence of unknown ocean currents. To cope with the above issues, a control scheme of a three-hierarchy structure of control loops is developed, which has been embedded with online current estimator/compensator and effective control parameter tuning. The current estimator can evaluate both horizontal and vertical current velocity components, based only on the measurement of AUV’s velocity relative to the ground; in contrast, most existing methods use the measurements of both AUV’s velocities respectively relative to the ground and the water column. In addition to numerical simulation, the proposed docking scheme is fully implemented in a prototype AUV using MOOS-IvP architecture. Simulation results show that the current estimator/compensator works well even in the presence of lateral current disturbance. Finally, a series of sea trials are conducted to validate the current estimator/compensator and the whole docking system. The sea trial results show that our control methods can drive the AUV into the dock station effectively and robustly.
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Acknowledgements
This work would not have been possible without the sustained effort of the entire docking team. The authors especially thank the MIT MOOS-IvP team for making this valuable tool publicly available.
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Project supported by the Zhejiang Provincial Natural Science Foundation (No. LY16F010007), the National High-Tech R&D Program of China (No. 2013AA09A414), and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities, China (No. 2017QNA5009)
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Li, B., Xu, Yx., Fan, Ss. et al. Underwater docking of an under-actuated autonomous underwater vehicle: system design and control implementation. Frontiers Inf Technol Electronic Eng 19, 1024–1041 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1631/FITEE.1700382
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1631/FITEE.1700382
Key words
- Autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV)
- Docking systems
- Current estimator
- Current compensation
- Docking control