Design of X-rudder autonomous underwater vehicle’s quadruple-rudder allocation with Lévy flight character

Abstract

This article addresses one quadruple-rudder allocation method for an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) equipped with X rudder, in which all of the rudders can be operated independently. By considering X rudder’s character, one X-rudder AUV’s control information frame is designed. It contains the anti-normalization method based on virtual rudders and one quadruple-rudder allocation with Lévy flight character. This quadruple-rudder allocation method has the advantages of Lévy flight and avoids the shaking problem. One contrast simulation of a lawn mower path following mission in three-dimensional (3D) space is performed. The results of simulation show that the quadruple-rudder allocation with Lévy flight character can offer accurate and reliable control ability. Besides that, compared to the quadruple-rudder allocation based on pseudoinverse and fixed point iteration, the method designed with Lévy flight character can achieve the same mission with less X rudder’s operation.