• International Journal of Naval Architecture and Ocean Engineering
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.679-687
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• 2019

This paper presents the autonomous swimming technology developed for an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) operating in the underwater jacket structure environment. To prevent the position divergence of the inertial navigation system constructed for the primary navigation solution for the vehicle, we've developed kinds of marker-recognition based underwater localization methods using both of optical and acoustic cameras. However, these two methods all require the artificial markers to be located near to the cameras mounted on the vehicle. Therefore, in the case of the vehicle far away from the structure where the markers are usually mounted on, we may need alternative position-aiding solution to guarantee the navigation accuracy. For this purpose, we develop a sonar image processing based underwater localization method using a Forward Looking Sonar (FLS) mounted in front of the vehicle. The primary purpose of this FLS is to detect the obstacles in front of the vehicle. According to the detected obstacle(s), we apply an Occupancy Grid Map (OGM) based path planning algorithm to derive an obstacle collision-free reference path. Experimental studies are carried out in the water tank and also in the Pohang Yeongilman port sea environment to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed autonomous swimming technology.

• International Journal of Naval Architecture and Ocean Engineering
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.448-461
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• 2019

Changes in gravity and buoyancy of a Full Ocean Depth Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (FOD-AUV) during its descending and ascending process must be considered very carefully compared with a Human Occupied Vehicle (HOV) or a Remotely Pperated Vehicle (ROV) whose activities rely on human decision. We firstly designed a two-step weight dropping pattern to achieve a high descending and ascending efficiency and a gravity-buoyancy balance at designed depth. The static equations showed that gravity acceleration, seawater density and displacement are three key aspects affecting the balance. Secondly, we try our best to analysis the gravity and buoyancy changing according to the previous known scientific information, such as anomaly of gravity acceleration, changing of seawater states. Finally, we drew conclusion that gravity changes little (no more than 0.1kgf, it is impossible to give a accurate value). A density-depth relationship at the Challenger Deep was acquired and the displacement changing of the FOD-AUV was calculated preciously.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Marine Environment & Safety
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• v.28 no.3
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• pp.441-450
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• 2022

The introduction of autonomous underwater gliders (AUGs) specifically addresses the reduction of operational costs that were previously prohibited with conventional autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) using a "scaling-down" design philosophy by utilizing the characteristics of autonomous drifters to far extend operation duration and coverage. Long-duration, wide-area missions raise the cost and complexity of in-water testing for novel approaches to autonomous mission planning. As a result, a simulator that supports the rapid design, development, and testing of autonomy solutions across a wide range using software-in-the-loop simulation at faster-than-real-time speeds becomes critical. This paper describes a faster-than-real-time AUG simulator that can support high-resolution bathymetry for a wide variety of ocean environments, including ocean currents, various sensors, and vehicle dynamics. On top of the de facto standard ROS-Gazebo framework and open-sourced underwater vehicle simulation packages, features specific to AUGs for ocean mapping are developed. For vehicle dynamics, the next-generation hybrid autonomous underwater gliders (Hybrid-AUGs) operate with both the buoyancy engine and the thrusters to improve navigation for bathymetry mappings, e.g., line trajectory, are is implemented since because it can also describe conventional AUGs without the thrusters. The simulation results are validated with experiments while operating at 120 times faster than the real-time.

• International Journal of Naval Architecture and Ocean Engineering
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• v.8 no.3
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• pp.243-251
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• 2016

Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) generally work in complex marine environments. Any fault in AUVs may cause significant losses. Thus, system reliability and automatic fault diagnosis are important. To address the actuator failure of AUVs, a fault diagnosis method based on the Gaussian particle filter is proposed in this study. Six free-space motion equation mathematical models are established in accordance with the actuator configuration of AUVs. The value of the control (moment) loss parameter is adopted on the basis of these models to represent underwater vehicle malfunction, and an actuator failure model is established. An improved Gaussian particle filtering algorithm is proposed and is used to estimate the AUV failure model and motion state. Bayes algorithm is employed to perform robot fault detection. The sliding window method is adopted for fault magnitude estimation. The feasibility and validity of the proposed method are verified through simulation experiments and experimental data.

• International Journal of Naval Architecture and Ocean Engineering
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• v.7 no.5
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• pp.817-832
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• 2015

This paper presents a state feedback based backstepping control algorithm to address the trajectory tracking problem of an underactuated Unmanned Surface Vessel (USV) in the horizontal plane. A nonlinear three Degree of Freedom (DOF) underactuated dynamic model for USV is considered, and trajectory tracking controller that can track both curve trajectory and straight line trajectory with high accuracy is designed as the well known Persistent Exciting (PE) conditions of yaw velocity is completely relaxed in our study. The proposed controller has further been enriched by incorporating an integral action additionally for enhancing the steady state performance and control precision of the USV trajectory tracking control system. Global stability of the overall system is proved by Lyapunov theory and Barbalat's Lemma, and then simulation experiments are carried out to demonstrate the effectiveness of the controller designed.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Intelligent Systems
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• v.21 no.3
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• pp.323-328
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• 2011

In real system application, the 3-D obstacle avoidance system for the autonomous control of the underwater flight vehicle (UFV) operates with the following problems: the sonar offers the range/bearing information of obstacles in a local detection area, it requires the system that has reduced acoustic noise and power consumption in terms of the autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV), it has the UFV operation constraints such as maximum pitch and depth, and it requires an easy design procedure in terms of its structures and parameters. To solve these problems, an intelligent 3-D obstacle avoidance algorithm using the evolution strategy (ES) and the fuzzy logic controller (FLC), is proposed. To verify the performance of the proposed algorithm, the 3-D obstacle avoidance of UFV is performed. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm effectively solves the problems in the real system application.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Precision Engineering Conference
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• 2003.06a
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• pp.316-320
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• 2003

This paper introduces an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) model, ASUM, equipped with a visual servo control system to dock into an underwater station with a camera and motion sensors. To make a visual servoing AUV, this paper implemented the visual servo control system designed with an augmented state equation, which was composed of the optical flow model of a camera and the equation of the AUV's motion. The system design and the hardware configuration of ASUM are presented in this paper. ASUM recognizes the target position by processing the captured image for the lights, which are installed around the end of the cone-type entrance of the duct. Unfortunately, experiments are not yet conducted when we write this article. The authors will present the results for the AUV docking test.

• Journal of Power System Engineering
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.24-29
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• 2016

Remotely operated vehicles or autonomous underwater vehicles have been used for exploiting seabed natural resources. In this study, the autonomous underwater vehicle of hovering type(HAUV) is developed to observe underwater objects in close distance. A dynamic model with six degrees of freedom is established, capturing the motion characteristics of the HAUV. The equations of motion are generated for the dynamic control simulation of the HAUV. The added mass, drag and lift forces are included in the computer model. Computational fluid dynamics simulation is carried out using this computer model. The drag coefficients are produced from the CFD.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.19 no.9
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• pp.813-821
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• 2013

In this paper, we present the development of P-SURO II hybrid AUV (Autonomous Underwater Vehicle) which can be operated in both of AUV and ROV (Remotely Operated Vehicle) modes. In its AUV mode, the vehicle is supposed to carry out some of underwater missions which are difficult to be achieved in ROV mode due to the tether cable. To accomplish its missions such as inspection and maintenance of complex underwater structures in AUV mode, the vehicle is required to have high level of autonomy including environmental recognition, obstacle avoidance, autonomous navigation, and so on. In addition to its systematic development issues, some of algorithmic issues are also discussed in this paper. Various experimental studies are also presented to demonstrate these developed autonomy algorithms.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Navigation and Port Research Conference
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• v.1
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• pp.513-517
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• 2006

Autonomous Underwater Vehicles plays specific role in underwater investigation. Generally, this kind of vehicles will move along a planned path for sea bottom or underwater installations inspections, search for mineral deposits along shelves, seeking lost items including bottom mines or for hydrographic measurements. A crucial barrier for it remains the possibility of precise determination of their underwater position. Commonly used radionavigation systems do not work in such circumstances or do not guarantee the required accuracies. In the paper some new solution is proposed on the assumption that it is possible to increase the precision by certain processing of a combination of measurements conducted by means of different techniques. Objective of the paper is the idea of navigation of AUV which consists of two phases: firstly a trip of AUV along pre-planned route and after that postprocessed transformation of collected data in post-processing mode. During the processing of collected data the modern adjustment methods have been applied, mainly estimation by means of least squares and M-estimation. Application of these methods should be associated with the measuring and geometric conditions of navigational tasks and thus suited for specific scientific and technical problems of underwater navigation. The first results of computer aided investigation will be presented and the basic scope of these application and possible development directions will be indicated also. The paper is prepared as an partial results of the works carried out within a framework of the research Project: 'Improvement of the Precise Underwater Vehicle Navigation Methods' financed by the Polish Ministry of Education and Science (No 0 T00A 012 25).