S.19.05 Development of molecular targets for understanding and treating stress-related disorders

Abstract

The problem of an unmanned surface vehicle following another vessel, both underwater or on the surface, without having any a priori information about its path is addressed in this paper. Theoretically the problem is solved extending nonlinear Lyapunov-based control techniques to the case of a master-slave vehicle formation, introducing a virtual controlled degree of freedom for the target to be followed on the path. In order to validate the proposed approach for different classes of vehicles, two typical operational cases are considered: i) a slave USV, acting as a communication relay, is required to remain over the vertical of a master AUV; ii) a slave USV is required to follow the path of a master USV at a desired range, for instance, for collecting bathymetric profiles with two different sensors. Experiments on the AUV-USV case study are performed in the multi-vehicle simulation environment Thetis, developed by CNRS-LIRMM considering a joined mission of the Taipan AUV and Charlie USV. The effectiveness of the proposed approach in the USV-USV case has been demonstrated by at sea trials carried out with the Charlie and ALANIS USVs.