Design and Control of an Unmanned Underwater Vehicle

Abstract

Unmanned Underwater Vehicles have become very important requirements today as they can perform a wide variety of operations in an underwater environment. With the increasing worldwide use of Remotely Operated Vehicles, the necessity of enhancing operator efficiency has emerged, therefore, the Autonomous Underwater Vehicles have become highly desirable for that purpose but the cost of controlling Autonomous Operated Vehicle is significantly expensive than the Remotely Operated Vehicles. As exemplified above, both types of underwater vehicles have several advantages and disadvantages. The UUV presented in that paper has the basic features of both vehicle types and it’s controlled by adjusting the thrust forces generated by the six thrusters with the help of a closed-loop control system developed. The dynamics of the UUV has been derived from Newton-Euler equations and the Euler angle representation has been used to define rotations of the UUV. Since the Euler angle parametrization contains singularities around 90 degrees of pitch angle, a passive stability mechanism has also been created mechanically on the vehicle beside the software preventions. A parameter identification approach to make a minimum number of assumptions on the dynamic model has been presented. This paper considers the mechanical design, mathematical modeling and control of an Unmanned Underwater Vehicle that covers the features of both remotely and autonomously operating underwater vehicles.