Guidance and Control of Unmanned, Untethered Submersible for Rendezvous and Docking with Underwater Station

Abstract

This paper proposes a new concept of underwater unmanned survey system consisting of a mother ship, a launcher, an underwater station(UUS) and a group of unmanned, untethered submersibles (UROVs) t o perform autonomously distributed missions in massive, f a s t and precise manners. Especially, UUS has the autonomous missions of docking with UROVs, charging of those battcries, exchange of informations and watch of UROVs. A new type of UROV recently proposed by one of the authors is employed in this concept t o perform a s table oceanographic underwater investigation on a prearranged course. Control configured vehicle (CCV) techonology is adopted t o perform the swimming at t i tude control. Fuzzy algorithm is applied t o guidance of UROV on a prrearranged course t o reason the collision risk against sea bed and forward obstacles, and t o determine control magnitudes o f CCV modes. A s one of feasibility studies of the proposed underwater unmanned survey system, the guidance of UROV fo r rendezvous and docking with UUS, consisting of rough one t o the neighborhood of UUS, and precise one t o the entrance of UUS is numerically simulated taking the effect of t idal current into account.