Position control of single link underwater robot manipulator

Abstract

This paper presents the responses of underwater manipulator control using conventional PID controller. Underwater manipulation tasks are difficult due to the presence of water as its environment. Many underwater vehicles invented incorporate underwater manipulators which could be used for underwater rescue, recovery or operations such as welding or ship repair. It is desired to investigate the position response of underwater manipulator using conventional PID control without modelling the dynamics which includes motion in water. For this purpose, a single link manipulator was experimented and compared between the response of the manipulator underwater and the manipulator without water to compare accuracy of the position tracking. Two different reference trajectories were given, namely step and varying frequency position control.