Surveillance missions for multiple autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) system suggest the use of different modes of operation including organizing and keeping a predefined formation, avoiding obstacles, reaching static and tracking dynamic targets. While exploiting a leader-follower strategy to formation control and the vector Lyapunov function method to controller design, we use discrete-event...

A key component of an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) is the navigation system. It is important for navigating the vehicle but it is also vital for being able to utilize the data collected during a mission. This paper presents the main challenges faced when designing reliable underwater navigation systems, and outlines a framework for detecting and isolating sensor faults using a bank of Ka...

Unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs) are increasingly being used by civilian and defence operators for ever more complex and dangerous missions. This is due to the underlying characteristics of safety and cost effectiveness when compared to manned vehicles. UUVs require no human operator be subject to the conditions and dangers inherent in the underwater environment that the vehicle is exposed t...

This paper reports the development and field testing of DVLNAV, an interactive program for precision three-dimensional navigation of underwater vehicles. The goal of this system is to provide vehicle position and velocity navigation data with both the precision and update rate necessary to enable closed-loop vehicle control. We report the results of preliminary field trials of DVLNAV with the J...

The application of a new nonlinear optimal control strategy to the station-keeping control of an underwater robotic vehicle is considered. The control approach described and demonstrated here is based upon the numerical approximation of solutions to the Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman equation. These solutions are computed by an iterative application of a Galerkin-type method. Preliminary simulation re...

The increasing use ofAutonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUV) in industrial or scientific applications makes the vehicle localization one of the challenging questions to consider for the mission success. GraphSLAM has emerged as a promising approach in land vehicles, however, due to the complexity of the aquatic media, these systems have been rarely applied in underwater vehicles. The few existing ...

In this article we present a feedback control law which gives exponential convergence of a nonholonomic underwater vehicle to a constant desired connguration. This is achieved using a piecewise smooth feedback control law which is based on previous work on the control of nonholonomic mobile robots in the plane. The kinematic model of the underwater vehicle is given in SE(3) by homogeneous trans...

This paper considers thruster dead zones and saturation limits in fine motion control of underwater robots. Thruster dead zones and saturation limits are major nonlinear elements that make fine motion control of underwater robots difiicult. If the vehicle is designed with a redundant thruster configuration, the dead zone and the nonlinear region around it can be completely avoided by implementi...

In this article we present a feedback control law which gives exponential convergence of a nonholonomic underwater vehicle to a constant desired connguration. This is achieved using a piecewise smooth feedback control law which is based on previous work on the control of nonholonomic mobile robots in the plane. The kinematic model of the underwater vehicle is given in SE(3) by homogeneous trans...

Maneuverability describes a vehicle’s ability to change course or turn. Maneuverability of conventional underwater vehicles, such as torpedoes, can be determined by altering the position and length of control fins. To perform large-area surveying tasks, autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) generally require different maneuverability characteristics in their vertical and horizontal planes of mo...