Rehman, Faheem (University College London), Thomas, Giles (University College London), Anderlini, Enrico (University College London)

Centralized Control System Design for Underwater Transportation Using Two Hovering Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (HAUVs)

Scheduled for presentation during the Regular Session "Robotics and Autonomous Vehicles" (WeA1Rob), Wednesday, August 21, 2019, 11:30−11:50,

5th IFAC International Conference on Intelligent Control and Automation Sciences, August 21-23, 2019, Queen’s University Belfast, Northern Ireland

This information is tentative and subject to change. Compiled on April 24, 2024

Abstract

Subsea transportation is necessary to avoid the detection of a military payload or to precisely place a subsea installation of an offshore platform. Payload transportation using multiple HAUVs provides additional advantages such as transporting larger loads, flexibility in the number of vehicles used and fault tolerance. This paper designs a centralized control system for the two HAUVs undertaking underwater transportation of a spherical payload via cylindrical manipulators. First, the nonlinear coupled dynamic model is developed considering the rigid body connection method for transportation. The effect of the hydrodynamic, hydrostatic and thrust parameters are taken about the centre of the combined body i.e. the centre of the payload. Path trajectory is generated using the minimum snap trajectory algorithm. The trajectory is divided into segments for each directional motion which is further divided into the waypoints based on the time step of the duration. The path between the two waypoints is represented by a 7th order polynomial. The centralized control system is designed to follow the desired trajectory. The control system is designed using the PID controllers for the motion control in each direction. The main requirements are the stability of the payload, accurate trajectory tracking and robustness to overcome uncertainties. Stability cannot be compromised because of the rigid connection between the vehicles and the payload whereas, the tracking is given a tolerance of ±5%. The transportation task is observed for the desired motion in the horizontal plane. The time domain simulation results show that the system is following the desired trajectory while meeting the technical requirements.