An AUV for Ocean Exploring and its Motion Control System Architecture

With the development of exploring and utilizing ocean source, Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) which could finish autonomous mission process is paid more and more attention. As an artificial intelligence system, AUV has high independence, reliability and adaptability to ocean environment. An efficient architecture of AUV plays an important role in achieving those properties. A newly developed AUV, “ZT-AUV”, which is used for ocean exploring, is introduced. And its motion control system architecture is described. The architecture is divided into four parts including blackboard system, elementary behavior agent group, reflection behavior agent group and execution agent. The blackboard system is not only information processing and management center, but also agents’ behavior control center. As the executable unit of motion controller, elementary behavior agent group makes AUV achieve three kinds of motion including surge, yaw and heave by certain control algorithm. Reflection behavior agent group is the unit by which the behavior of AUV can be achieved in another way, and it works when the system has fault. Execution agent finally drives the actuators of the system. The structures of the four parts mentioned above are discussed respectively. Both the hardware and software are described. Finally, simulation experiments and real experiments are conducted to test the whole system, and the results prove that the system architecture is reliable, flexible and extensible.