Conceptual Design Study of a Hovering System Controller for an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle

摘要

An Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) will have many operational scenarios that will include a transition from cruise to hover over a fixed position in the ocean. While hovering, the AUV must be able to balance the current induced forces a difficult task to accomplish automatically. The magnitude of these forces induced on an example AUV have been estimated for currents from 4 m/s to 1 m/s with the incident current varying from 0 deg to 360 deg. Using the estimated forces, different configurations of thrusters were investigated and the power required for different thruster configurations compared. Three thrusters (two longitudinal, one lateral) can balance the forces exactly and a unique solution was evaluated. With redundant thrusters, more economical schemes can developed using force allocation logic with minimum norm solutions. System horsepower requirements have been estimated and a conceptual model based controller methodology has been proposed. The force allocation logic proposed will now allow for a smooth transition from cruise to hover mode positions. Keywords: Theses; Stationkeeping.