Station-keeping strategy in emergency mode for wave gliders considering power shortages

Abstract

The wave glider (WG) is an autonom surface vehicle (ASV) that is driven only by waves without propellers, and it maintains the power consumption of the control system and various payloads through solar power generation. To cope with the power shortages caused by extreme weather and sudden failures, a station-keeping strategy in emergency mode for WGs is proposed in this paper, so that the WG can remain in the current area with extremely low power consumption. More specifically, according to the power consumption mechanism of the WG, a partition control method is designed to set different operating modes in different areas. Also, an event-triggered (ET) motion control algorithm is proposed to reduce the execution rate of the rudder, which introduces adjustment factors to dynamically adjust the trigger threshold to further cut down rudder steering power consumption. Additionally, an online heading prediction system is developed to predict the submerged glider heading (SGH) of the WG through the float heading (FH) when the rudder management system shuts down. Through simulation and experimental analysis, the strategy in emergency mode can achieve positioning control with extremely low power consumption.