Task space position tracking control of an autonomous underwater vehicle with four tilting thrusters

Abstract

Underwater vehicles are usually designed with additional degrees of freedom than those required to accomplish given manipulator tasks. A robot platform should be effective to maintain its position and orientation in order to attain diverse underwater tasks. This study addresses the dynamic modeling of an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) which consists of tilting thrusters for hovering motion to oppose reaction force of the manipulator and ocean current. The suggested system consists of four tilting thrusters with six degrees-of-freedom (DOF). The tilting movements of the thrusters make the system unstable due to complex coupling. A robust position tracking controller is designed based on redundancy resolution scheme has been posited. The trajectory tracking potentiality of the manipulator has been analyzed. The numerical results of the proposed redundancy resolution scheme indicate that this approach shows a significantly revamped outcome when compared with the conventional counterpart. © 2016 IEEE.