The goal of this work was to develop algorithms and software to generate a path that takes into account the direction of waves and wind as much as possible in order to mitigate potential damage to an autonomous underwater vehicle. A risk-based path planning algorithm to analyze real-world sensory data is combined with an enhanced sea surface model to generate a safe path.

Unmanned Surface/Underwater Vehicles

15AERP05_0305/01/2015

Controlling the Seas Introducing a New Concept in Autonomous Surface/Underwater Vehicles The boundary between the sea and sky is an important place to be. It's the critical connecting layer for commercial and military information exchange between the undersea world to aerial, space and shore. Being present at this boundary between sea and sky, with cost-effective endurance in challenging conditions, requires the use of autonomous surface vehicles. Designing long duration autonomous surface vehicles requires access to inexpensive, low-power computing; a persistent source of power; and durable mechanical engineering. The volume markets created by cellular telephones and video gaming has totally transformed the economics of computing. Coupled with creative mechanical designs that harness energy from the ocean for vehicle propulsion, and new generations of solar cells for electricity, the pervasive application of Autonomous Surface Vehicles (ASVs) is more practical. New advancements in

Method of Docking for Stratospheric Airships of Multibody Transportation System

2014-01-216209/16/2014

The paper describes methods for control of docking of two moving stratospheric airships. One of them (cruiser) implements cruising flight at the defined altitude with defined velocity. The other one (feeder) fulfills the mission of chasing the cruiser with following docking operations. Mathematical model of exact airships are used in the work. Instances of structural and algorithmic implementation are based on position-trajectory controller. Simulation of docking control was accomplished with proposed methods.

Pshikhopov, Viacheslav, Medvedev, Mikhail, Krukhmalev, Victor, Fedorenko, Roman, Gurenko, Boris

Path Following Control for Skid Steering Vehicles with Vehicle Speed Adaption

2014-01-027704/01/2014

In this paper we present a path following control design for a six-wheel skid-steering vehicle. Contrary to the common approaches that impose non-holonomic constraints, a dynamic vehicle model is established based on a pseudo-static tire model, which uses tire slip to determine tire forces. Our control system admits a modular structure, where a motion controller computes the reference vehicle yaw rate and reference vehicle speed and a dynamics controller tracks these signals. A robust nonlinear control law is designed to track the reference wheel speeds determined by the dynamics controller with proved stability properties. Saturated control techniques are employed in designing the reference yaw rate, which ensures the magnitude of the reference yaw rate does not violate the constraint from the ground-tire adhesion. The simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed path following control design.

Jin, Chi, Xiong, Lu, Yu, Zhuoping, Feng, Yuan

Submerged AUV Charging Station

TBMG-18886

01/01/2014

Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) are becoming increasingly important for military surveillance and mine detection. Most AUVs are battery powered and have limited lifetimes of a few days to a few weeks. This greatly limits the distance that AUVs can travel underwater. Using a series of submerged AUV charging stations, AUVs could travel a limited distance to the next charging station, recharge its batteries, and continue to the next charging station, thus traveling great distances in a relatively short time, similar to the Old West “Pony Express.”