Towards Precision Robotic Maneuvering, Survey, and Manipulation in Unstructured Undersea Environments

Abstract

This paper reports recent advances in the precision control of underwater robotic vehicles for survey and manipulation missions. A new underwater vehicle navigation and control system employing a new commercially available 1,200 kHz doppler sonar is reported. Comparative experimental trials compare the performance of the new system to conventional 12 kHz and 300 kHz long baseline LBL acoustic navigation systems. The results demonstrate a hybrid system incorporating both doppler and LBL to provide superior tracking in comparison to doppler or LBL alone. 1 Introduction Our goal is to develop new sensing and control systems for underwater vehicles with superior precision, reliability, and practical utility. While the analytical and experimental development of undersea robotic vehicle tracking controllers is rapidly developing, e.g. 14, 7, 5, 4, 12, 6, few experimental implementations have been reported other than for heading, altitude, depth, or attitude control. Conspicuously rare ...