An Approach for Optimizing Rate in Adaptive Path Tracking for Autonomous Underwater Vehicles

JORDAN, MARIO; BUSTAMANTE, JORGE

Ciudad de Panamá, Panamá

Conferencia; 2da. Conferencia/Workshop de Vehículos/Sistemas No Tripulados de América Latina; 2008

Centro Internacional de Tecnología del Ejercito de los EE.UU.

In this paper, an approach to automatic generation of time-optimal trajectories in navigation systems for full-actuated autonomous underwater vehicles is presented. The framework is a direct adaptive control system for minimum-time path following of arbitrary 3D trajectories, in where a servo-controller is designed for unknown vehicle dynamics and hydrodynamic derivatives. The time assignment is generated by means of an ordinary differential equation, which establishes a virtual monotonically increasing time. In this way, the vehicle can acquire an optimal cinematic profile on the reference path with asymptotic null errors for the position in 6 degrees of freedom without any thruster entering the saturation region at all. A design parameter that specifies a desired maximal energy bound of the thrusters is conceived to avoid vehicle skids from the path at sharp curves or to limit energy consumption. Examples on the basis of a case study illustrate the high overall control performance that can be achieved during a path tracking.