Fault tolerant control of autonomous underwater vehicles
Date
1998
Authors
Perrault, Douglas Edward
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Abstract
Autonomous underwater vehicles (AUV's) are used for ocean exploration and underwater research. For practical usage of these vehicles, there must be some form of fault recovery/fault tolerance in the control system. This work explores an adaptation of existing theory for synthesizing controls in the event of partial failure of the nominal control system. This control method will synthesize small motions in a given unactuated direction via open loop control of motions in actuated directions. Our goal is to determine the usefulness of the method for a typical streamlined vehicle in which control forces are generated by control planes rather than directly with thrusters. Using these algorithms in their present form, we find that the righting moment of the vehicle interferes with the achievement of the desired motions. However, motion synthesis can be achieved on a modified model that has no righting moment.