Semi-autonomous teleoperation of a non-holonomic underwater vehicle using a Laser Vision System: A visual-servoing switching control approach

This paper describes a switching visual servoing control scheme designed for an underwater vehicle with nonholonomic constraints. The objective of the proposed control methodology is to provide a human tele-operator the capability to move the vehicle without loosing a visual target from the vision system's optical field. Target tracking and vehicle pose are obtained using a Laser Vision System (LVS). Using a Lyapunov based switching controller design, the resulting controller has analytically guaranteed stability and convergence properties, while its applicability and performance have been experimentally verified using a small non-holonomic Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV), in a test tank.