• Journal of Ocean Engineering and Technology
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.48-53
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• 2009

Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUV's) provide an important means for collecting detailed scientific information from the ocean depths. The hull resistance of an AUV is an important factor in determining the power requirements and range of the vehicle. This paper describes a design method that uses Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) to determine the hull resistance of an AUV under development. The CFD results reveal the distribution of the hydrodynamic values (velocity, pressure, etc.) of an AUV with a ducted propeller. This paper also discusses the optimization of the AUV hull profile to reduce the total resistance. This paper demonstrates that shape optimization in a conceptual design is possible by using a commercial CFD package. Optimum design work to minimize the drag force of an AUV was carried out, for a given object function and constraints.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Military Science and Technology
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• v.12 no.5
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• pp.590-600
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• 2009

In the simulation of underwater vehicles such as a submarine or a torpedo, various type of simulations like an engineering level simulation for predicting the performance precisely and an engagement level simulation for examining the effectiveness of a certain tactic is required. For this reason, a tactics manager which can change the behavior of a simulation model according to external tactics is needed. In this study the tactics manager supporting a script language and engine which can represent various tactics and can help users define external input tactics for the tactic manager easily is suggested. Python and Lua which are representative among script languages have been compared and analyzed from the viewpoint of a tactic manage, and the tactic manger using the script engines of those script languages was implemented. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the tactic manager, a target motion analysis simulation of the warfare between a submarine and a surface ship.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.4 no.1
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• pp.45-55
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• 1998

In this paper, a robust path tracker and depth controller of Autonomous Underwater Vehicle based on sliding mode control is presented. We have also designed augmented equivalent control inputs by analyzing the sliding mode with the reaching mode. This can enhance the reaching rate, and improve chattering problems, that is, noise caused by the control plane actuator of the vehicle, which is one of the problems that occur when sliding mode control is used. Also to resolve the steady state error generated in the path tracker under current effect, a modified sliding plane is constructed. Also a redesigned sliding plane and control input using transformation matrix is proposed to do easy design of MIMO depth controller. For state variables that cannot be measured directly, reduced order sliding mode control is used to design an observer. The performance of designed path tracker and depth controller is investigated by computer simulation. The results show that the proposed control system has robust performance to parameter variation, modelling error and disturbance.

• International Journal of Naval Architecture and Ocean Engineering
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• v.7 no.5
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• pp.888-905
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• 2015

For Super-Cavitating Underwater Vehicles (SCUV), the numerical analyses and experiments in a large cavitation tunnel are carried out at relatively large Reynolds numbers. The numerical results agree well with experiments and the drag coefficient of SCUV is rarely changed by the Reynolds number. As the cavitation number is decreased, the cavity occurs and grows, the cavitator drag decreases and the body drag is affected by the degree of covering the body with the cavity. The tunnel effects, i.e. the blockage and the friction pressure drop of the tunnel, on the drag and the cavitation of SCUV are examined from the numerical results in between the tunnel and unbounded flows. In the tunnel, a minimum cavitation number exists and the drag of SCUV appears larger than that in unbounded flow. When the super-cavity covers the entire body, the friction drag almost disappears and the total drag of SCUV can be regarded as the pressure drag of cavitator.

• International Journal of Ocean System Engineering
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• v.1 no.3
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• pp.120-135
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• 2011

This paper proposes a model based trajectory tracking control scheme for under-actuated underwater robotic vehicles. The difficulty in stabilizing a non-linear system using smooth static state feedback law means that the design of a feedback controller for an under-actuated system is somewhat challenging. A necessary condition for the asymptotic stability of an under-actuated vehicle about a single equilibrium is that its gravitational field has nonzero elements corresponding to non-actuated dynamics. To overcome this condition, we propose a continuous time-varying control law based on the direct estimation of vehicle dynamic variables such as inertia, damping and Coriolis & centripetal terms. This can work satisfactorily under commonly encountered uncertainties such as an ocean current and parameter variations. The proposed control law cancels the non-linearities in the vehicle dynamics by introducing non-linear elements in the input side. Knowledge of the bounds on uncertain terms is not required and it is conceptually simple and easy to implement. The controller parameter values are designed using the Taguchi robust design approach and the control law is verified analytically to be robust under uncertainties, including external disturbances and current. A comparison of the controller performance with that of a linear proportional-integral-derivative (PID) controller and sliding mode controller are also provided.

• International Journal of Naval Architecture and Ocean Engineering
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.35-44
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• 2017

Supercavitation is one of the most attractive technologies to achieve high speed for underwater vehicles. However, the multiphase flow with high-speed around the supercavitating vehicle (SCV) is difficult to simulate accurately. In this paper, we use modified the turbulent viscosity formula in the Standard K-Epsilon (SKE) turbulent model to simulate the supercavitating flow. The numerical results of flow over several typical cavitators are in agreement with the experimental data and theoretical prediction. In the last part, a flying SCV was studied by unsteady numerical simulation. The selected computation setup corresponds to an outdoor supercavitating experiment. Only very limited experimental data was recorded due to the difficulties under the circumstance of high-speed underwater condition. However, the numerical simulation recovers the whole scenario, the results are qualitatively reasonable by comparing to the experimental observations. The drag reduction capacity of supercavitation is evaluated by comparing with a moving vehicle launching at the same speed but without supercavitation. The results show that the supercavitation reduces the drag of the vehicle dramatically.

• The Journal of Korea Robotics Society
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.51-59
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• 2016

In this paper we present (1) analysis of imaging sonar measurement for two-view relative pose estimation of an autonomous vehicle and (2) bundle adjustment and 3D reconstruction method using imaging sonar. Sonar has been a popular sensor for underwater application due to its robustness to water turbidity and visibility in water medium. While vision based motion estimation has been applied to many ground vehicles for motion estimation and 3D reconstruction, imaging sonar addresses challenges in relative sensor frame motion. We focus on the fact that the sonar measurement inherently poses ambiguity in its measurement. This paper illustrates the source of the ambiguity in sonar measurements and summarizes assumptions for sonar based robot navigation. For validation, we synthetically generated underwater seafloor with varying complexity to analyze the error in the motion estimation.

• International Journal of Naval Architecture and Ocean Engineering
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• v.4 no.1
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• pp.44-56
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• 2012

Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) provide a useful means of collecting detailed oceano-graphic information. The hull resistance of an AUV is an important factor in determining the power requirements and range of the vehicle. This paper describes a procedure using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) for determining the hull resistance of an AUV under development, for a given propeller rotation speed and within a given range of AUV velocities. The CFD analysis results reveal the distribution of the hydrodynamic values (velocity, pressure, etc.) around the AUV hull and its ducted propeller. The paper then proceeds to present a methodology for optimizing the AUV profile in order to reduce the total resistance. This paper demonstrates that shape optimization of conceptual designs is possible using the commercial CFD package contained in Ansys$^{TM}$. The optimum design to minimize the drag force of the AUV was identified for a given object function and a set of constrained design parameters.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.8 no.12
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• pp.1023-1030
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• 2002

Since the dynamics of autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) are highly nonlinear and their hydrodynamic coefficients vary with different vehicle's operating conditions, high performance control systems of AUVs are needed to have the capacities of teaming and adapting to the variations of the vehicle's dynamics. In this paper, a linearly parameterized neural network (LPNN) is used to approximate the uncertainties of the vehicle dynamics, where the basis function vector of the network is constructed according to the vehicle's physical properties. The network's reconstruction errors and the disturbances in the vehicle dynamics are assumed be bounded although the bound may be unknown. To attenuate this unknown bounded uncertainty, a certain estimation scheme for this unknown bound is introduced combined with a sliding mode scheme. The proposed controller is proven to guarantee that all signals in the closed-loop system are uniformly ultimately bounded (UUB). Numerical simulation studies are performed to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed control scheme.

• The Journal of Korea Robotics Society
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.206-215
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• 2014

Acoustic signal is crucial for the autonomous navigation of underwater vehicles. For this purpose, this paper presents a method of acoustic source localization. The proposed method is based on the probabilistic estimation of time delay of acoustic signals received by two hydrophones. Using Bayesian update process, the proposed method can provide reliable estimation of direction angle of the acoustic source. The acquired direction information is used to estimate the location of the acoustic source. By accumulating direction information from various vehicle locations, the acoustic source localization is achieved using extended Kalman filter. The proposed method can provide a reliable estimation of the direction and location of the acoustic source, even under for a noisy acoustic signal. Experimental results demonstrate the performance of the proposed acoustic source localization method in a real sea environment.