An Advanced Autonomous Underwater Vehicle Design and Control Strategy

Jiaxing Che , Joseph Cernio , Joseph Prainito , Michael Zuba , Chengyu Cao , Jun-Hong Cui and Kazem Kazerounian,
Computer

Engineering Department, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT, USA Science & Engineering Department, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT, USA {jiaxing.che, joseph.cernio, joseph.prainito, zuba, ccao, jcui, kazem}@engr.uconn.edu

Mechanical

AbstractIn this paper, an advanced design of an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) is presented. The design is driven only by four water pumps. The different power combinations of the four motors provides the force and moment for propulsion and maneuvering. No control surfaces are needed in this design, which make the manufacturing cost of such a vehicle minimal and more reliable. Based on the propulsion method of the vehicle, a nonlinear AUV dynamic model is studied. This nonlinear model is linearized at the operation point. A control strategy of the AUV is proposed including attitude control and auto-pilot design. Simulation results for the attitude control loop are presented to validate this approach. Index Terms Autonomous Underwater Vehicles, Attitude Control, Auto-Pilot design, AUV modeling

I. I NTRODUCTION

The ocean is a harsh and dynamic environment. Therefore, it still remains mysterious and relatively unexplored. Bodies of water will play a vital role in mankinds future - notably for food resources, energy, materials and climate effects. In order to leverage these aforementioned items we require a platform to explore the underwater environment. One such platform is that of an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV). Underwater vehicle design and their control strategies have drawn large research attention. This paper presents an AUV design and control strategy to facilitate the advancement of autonomous underwater networks. The current design is in the prototype stages and a relatively low cost but fully functional vehicle has been designed and fabricated. The control hardware will contain various devices from acoustic modems and inertial measurement units (IMUs) and compasses. The control strategy of the AUV includes modeling, attitude control and a auto-pilot design. Simulation results will be presented in order to study and improve our design. Fig. 1. Mechanical Design and Propulsion System The rest of the paper is as follows: Section II will discuss the mechanical design of the AUV, Section III will introduce our III. P ROOF OF C ONCEPT T ESTING proof of concept for testing, Section IV will present our control The proof of concept system has been designed to be system design in detail, in Section V we provide simulation results and validate our design and finally in Section VI we passively stable. In initial testing, this criterion has been sufficiently met with a self-righting time of approximately 1 provide our conclusions and future work. second from a complete roll over. A large and versatile cargo II. M ECHANICAL D ESIGN bay allows the testing of a variety of component sizes and This full-scale platform utilizes a vectored-thrust propulsion shapes. Initial testing of the propulsion system in a swimming system powered by four low-cost submersible bilge pumps pool environment has displayed an acceptable cruising speed forming four water-jet thrusters with reducing end nozzles. and turn radius.

This provides an optimal thrust to flow rate ratio. By differentiating the power combinations of four motors, the force and moment needed for the propulsion and maneuvering are generated. The machine design has two working modes. Mode 1, as shown in Figure 1 is the non-vectored-thurst mode. In this mode, the force vector is one degree of freedom (DOF) pointing to the back and two DOF of moment to manipulate the pitch and yaw angle. Mode 2 is the vectored-thrust mode. In this mode, the vehicle utilizes the same concept of the quadcopter. Together, it provides 1 DOF of thrust force and 3 DOF of moment. Mode 2 further enables the vehicle to change the roll angle. The advantage of the vector approach is that it only uses four motors for propulsion and full maneuvering (in three angles). The manufacturing cost is low compared to that of a more deep-water design that would require more control surfaces.

978-1-4673-0831-1/12/$31.00 2012 IEEE

Fig. 2.

Future Design Objective

The test procedure includes balance alignment in static and dynamic working point: Static balance and alignment: With all the motor power set to zero. We adjust the uid level to make the buoyancy force equal. Additionally, we adjust the position of the buoyancy to make the attitude of the AUV straight in the water. The fluid level and position of the buoyancy control unit is adjustable. This static balancing and alignment can make the vehicle naturally closed to the desired system. When the closed loop control system is applied to this vehicle, the control law can compensate these unbalanced and misaligned factors. However, the initial alignment can still reduce the control effort. The control signal is with in limited amplitude due to the physical constraint. Initial alignment also helps to ensure that the vehicle parameter falls into the range which is fully controllable for the control signal with limited amplitude.

Fig. 4.

Prototype Side View

into three subsections and provides the formulation for the control strategy. The general approach of the modeling of a remotely operated vehicle (ROV), an AUV or other underwater vehicles are discussed in [1], [2] [3], [4]. In this paper, some results are revisited, further simplification of the model are derived to help design a more efficient control system. 1) Actuator Dynamics: In our work an actuator is the water pumps. The dynamic relation of the setting value of the speed controller and real-time speed of motor is described in Equation (1). A single lag model is used to model the realtime speed i of the motor i and the setting input value ui .
1 ui (s) (1) Tm s + 1 2) Force and Moment Generation Process: This part analyzes how the force and moment are generated and applied to the AUV. There are three types of force applied on the vehicle, weight and buoyancy force and moment, water pump propulsion force and moment and AUV fluid dynamic force and moment a) Weight and Buoyancy: The gravitational force and buoyant force are defined in terms of the global coordinate system so they must be transformed to the local coordinate systems. i (s) = Fw = mg FB = gV sin sin cos sin cos sin cos cos cos cos (2)

The buoyancy force is as (3)

Fig. 3. Swimming Pool Test of Prototype

IV. C ONTROL S YSTEM D ESIGN A. Dynamic model of the AUV In this section, the dynamic model from the actuator (4 motors) and the position is studied. This part can be decoupled

Where g is the gravitational acceleration, is the uid density and V is the volume of the uid displaced by the vehicle. The moments generated by these forces can be expressed in terms of the positions of the center of mass C and the center of the buoyancy B [1]. GW = RC FW , GB = RB FB (4)

Where RC and RB are the respective positions of the center of mass and the center of buoyancy in the local coordinate system. The AUV designed in this paper is aligned to be neutrally buoyant which means Fw = FB . It is also aligned to be naturally stable, which means the two of three Euler angles , are close to zero. The moment generated by the buoyancy force and gravity force can be simplified as follows. xs = GW d sin() GW d ys = GW d sin() GW d (5) (6)

2 1 b b b b T 2 x 0 0 0 0 2 2 y = lb lb lb lb 3 2 lb lb lb lb z 4

(16)

Linearize the above equation at a operation points: T T 1 2 3 4 = 0 0 0 0 1 2 T = b0 1 1 1 1 (17) 3 4 y = lb0 1 1 1 1 1 2 3 4 z = lb0 1 1 1 1 1 2 3 4

Where d is the distance from the gravity center and buoyancy center. The stabilization moments xs , ys are always trying to maintain stability, which means the larger the d, the more stable the vehicle. b) Water Pump Propulsion Force and Moment: The quadcopter model is well studied in [5]. Similarly, the resultant force and moment of a thruster con guration consisting of N thrusters can be expressed as the vector sum of the force and moment form each individual thruster: FT =
N

(18)

(19)

FT i

(7)

The control law design needs to discover a power combinaT to generate tion of the vector 1 2 3 4 the T , , .the following equation is a candidate to GT = GT i + RT i FT i (8) y z achieve this goal. N N Where RT i is the position of the ith thruster in local coordi1 1 nates. The magnitudes of the thruster and torque generated by 2 1 the ith thruster can be expressed as: 3 = 1 b0 Tb 1 4 4 |FT i | = KT i n2 (9) i Di 5 1 1 (10) |GT i | = KQi n2 i Di 1 lb0 y + 1 lb0 z + Where Di is the diameter of the thruster, ni is the angular 1 1 speed of the thruster shaft and KT i and KQi are the thruster 1 1 and torque coefficients of the thruster. The major problem that (20) is encountered in thruster modeling is that they behave as highly nonlinear actuators. Therefore, the thruster and torque Equation (20) is used to derive the control law in the following coefficients cannot be represented as being constant but rather section. must be expressed as functions of the advanced coefficient. c) AUV Fluid Dynamic Force and Moment: The AUV J = V /nD. Where V is the axial speed of the thruster. body has a complex shape and therefore the modeling of the complex behavior is almost impractical. From the control 2 Ti = bi (11) system point of view, the most important thing is the simplified model at the operation points. 0 0 The drag equation of fluid is: mv = 0 R() 0 (12) 1 Tb mg fD = v 2 Cd A (21) 2 Where is the density of the uid, v is the speed of the 1 2 2 2 2 + 2 + 3 + 4 ) (13) object relative to the uid, Cd is the drag coefficient, A is the Tb = 0 b(1 reference area. In the vector form: 0 2 sign(vx )vx Cdx Ax 0 0 1 2 2 2 2 2 sign(vy )vy 2 + 3 + 4 ) (14) yt = lb(1 0 Cdy Ay 0 FD = Cd A 2 2 0 0 C A sign(v )v
2 2 2 2 zt = lb(1 2 3 + 4 ) dz z z z

(15)

(22)

Where Cdx, Cdy, Cdz and Ax, Ay , Az, are the damping coefficients for the x, y, z directions. Similarly for the rotational moment is: 2 sign(x)x 0 0 Cx 1 2 Cy 0 sign(y )y D = 0 (23) 2 2 0 0 C sign( )
z z z

at = /2. For the following discussion, we assume that the trajectory of AUV does not pass through the singularities. If the trajectory is required to pass through the singularities, we can simply switch to another chart parameterizing the rotation matrix. By using the fact that v b = P v b , we can rewrite the motion equations of a rigid body as: p v mv RT ()f b = () b b b b I I x p = y , = z (29)

To summarize, the overall force f and moment applied to AUV is as follows: f b = Tb + FD xs 0 = yy + yt + D 0 zt (24)

(25)

where Tb fD xs ys yt zt and D are defined in Equations (13), (22), (5), (6), (14) ,(15). 3) Rigid Dynamics of the AUV Body: This section discusses the relationship of the body force, velocity and angular velocity, attitude and position in the navigation reference frame. Revisiting the notations in [6], the equations of motion for a rigid body subject to body force fb R3 and torque b R3 applied at the center of mass and specified with respect to the body coordinate frame is given by the Newton-Euler equation in the body coordinate which can be written as:
mI 0 0 I v b b + b mv b b I b = fb b (26)

Where vb R3 is the body velocity vector, b R3 is the body angular velocity vector, m R, specifies the mass, I R33 is an identity matrix and I R33 is an inertial matrix. The effects of added mass [1] will inuence the total mass m and total moment of inertial matrix J. There will be large uncertainties in those parameters. The position and velocity of the AUV center of gravity are R3 , respectively, expressed to given by P R3 and v p = P the spatial frame in North-East-Down orientation. Let R SO be the rotation matrix of the body axes relative to the spatial axes and vector. R can be parameterized by the ZYX Euler angles with , and about the x, y and z axes respectively.
R() z ) exp( y ) exp( x) = exp( cc ssc cs csc + ss = cs ssc + cc css sc s sc cc
T T

Equation (29) summarize the overall dynamic model of the AUV, where f b and are defined in Equations (24) and (25). B. Attitude Control of the AUV Based on the dynamic model of the AUV, this section studies the control law design to control the attitude of the AUV. This part is also the foundation of the auto-pilot design in the next section. Here a PID control law for pitch and yaw angle control is presented. Simulation results are also presented in the following section. Based on the analysis of Equation (20), the overall control law is given as follows: 1 1 1 2 1 1 u= 3 = 1 u T + 1 u y 1 1 4 1 1 u + 1 z 1 (30)
Where uT , uy , uz is the control channel for the total thrust, pitch angle and yaw angle. Letting d , d be the desired pitch and yaw angle, ey = d and ex = d , the control law is given as follows: uy = kpy ey + kdy e y + kiy uz = kpy ez + kdz e z + kiz ey ez (31) (32)

(27)

1 0 0 0 1 0 Where x = ,y = ,z = T 0 0 1 and c and s are abbreviations for cos() and sin() respectively and similarly for the other terms. By differentiating R() respect to time, we have the state T equations of the Euler angles = , which are 1 st ct = () b = 0 c s b (28) 0 sc c/c Where t is an abbreviation for tan(). In the ZYX Euler angle parameterization of rotation matrix, there are singularities

C. Auto-Pilot Design of the AUV In this section the auto-pilot design of the AUV is discussed. The control system structure is shown in Figure 5, a path following controller must make real time decisions to generate the attitude command and thrust command base on the current position and velocity and the desired trajectory. The thrust control signal uT is generated based on the desired velocity. The attitude command d , d is also generated from the path following controller. The control laws are well studied in [7], [8], [9], due to the time and page limitation, the details of the path following algorithm are not discussed in this paper.

R EFERENCES
[1] J. Yuh, Modeling and control of underwater robotic vehicles, Systems, Man and Cybernetics, IEEE Transactions on, vol. 20, no. 6, pp. 14751483, 1990. [2] M. Abkowitz, Stability and motion control of ocean vehicles, 1969. [3] B. Clayton and R. Bishop, Mechanics of marine vehicles. Gulf Publishing Company, 1982. [4] H. Kazerooni and T. Sheridan, Computer simulation and control of underwater vehicles, NASA STI/Recon Technical Report N, vol. 83, p. 29462, 1982. [5] P. Corke, Robotics, Vision and Control. [6] T. Koo, Y. Ma, and S. Sastry, Nonlinear control of a helicopter based unmanned aerial vehicle model, IEEE Transactions on Control Systems Technology, 2001. [7] I. Kaminer, O. Yakimenko, V. Dobrokhodov, A. Pascoal, N. Hovakimyan, C. Cao, A. Young, and V. Patel, Coordinated path following for time-critical missions of multiple uavs via l1 adaptive output feedback controllers, in AIAA Guidance, Navigation and Control Conference and Exhibit, 2007. [8] C. Cao, N. Hovakimyan, I. Kaminer, V. Patel, and V. Dobrokhodov, Stabilization of cascaded systems via l1 adaptive controller with application to a uav path following problem and flight test results, in American Control Conference, 2007. ACC07. IEEE, 2007, pp. 1787-1792. [9] A. Aguiar, I. Kaminer, R. Ghabcheloo, A. Pascoal, N. Hovakimyan, C. Cao, and V. Dobrokhodov, Coordinated path following of multiple uavs for time-critical missions in the presence of time-varying communication topologies, in IFAC Congress, Seoul, South Korea, 2008.

Fig. 5.

Diagram for the auto-pilot design for the AUV

V. S IMULATION R ESULTS A. Open Loop Response

The AUV dynamic model described in Equation (29) is implemented in Matlab Simulink. The simulation parameters, I moments of inertia and m AUV body mass, are closed to the AUV body design. The other coefficients are tuned such that the response of the Simulink model is closed to the real response, at least they are in the same time and space scale. Figure 6 is the natural response of the AUV with an initial Euler angle 0 = 2 0 o and 0 = 1 0 o. The gravity and buoyancy force can make the vehicle balance by itself. It can be seen that the pitch response is a lot slower than the roll response. This is due to the damping coefficients D in the pitch direction is much larger that in the roll directions. These coefficients are based on the experiment experience. The roll angle recovery time is much shorter than the pitch angle. Due to the rigid body coupling of the three angles, there is still a little response in the yaw direction, after the dynamic transient, yaw angle can maintain equilibrium at any value. The acceleration curve, shown in Figure 7, is also studied to determine the parameter of the thrusters. Based on the maximum cruse speed, the thrust coefficients b is chosen to make the data close to the real model.
B. Closed loop Response When the control signal uy and uz is implemented as de ned in Equation (31), (32), the attitude response is shown in Figure 8 and Figure 9. The RPM command sent to the four water pumps is shown in Figure 10 and the vertical displacement is shown in Figure 11. VI. C ONCLUSIONS

In this paper, a novel design of a low cost autonomous underwater vehicle driven by four water pumps is developed. The dynamic model of the AUV is derived and simplified for the control system design. Based on the linearized model, a control strategy is designed for the attitude control. Simulation results validated this design. The auto-pilot system structure is also presented. Future design work is to include the addition of a watertight containment vessel to house the required electronics, such as the modem boards, motor controllers and microcontrollers. Additionally, an active ballasting system is necessary to adjust the buoyancy force in real-time.

Fig. 6.

Natural Angular Response

Fig. 9.

Yaw Command Tracking

Fig. 7.

Acceleration Curve

Fig. 10.

Control signal (RPM) command for the four water pumps

Fig. 8.

Pitch Command Tracking

Fig. 11.

AUV vertical velocity