Formation-Keeping and Cooperative Control of AUVs Based on the Udwadia-Kalaba Equation
Éverton Lins De Oliveira, Renato Maia Matarazzo Orsino, Décio Crisol Donha · 2023
Abstract Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) represent an efficient alternative for performing complex tasks such as ocean monitoring, inspection of underwater structures, pipelines and vessels, and transportation of objects. The use of multiple AUVs acting cooperatively can increase the performance in these tasks, at the cost of making the overall operation more challenging. In this paper, a novel reference filter for the Formation Keeping (FK) of multiple AUVs is proposed. Basically, the FK objectives are treated as servo-constraints. Thus, the reference values for the motion control can be directly computed using Udwadia-Kalaba equation, which was originally proposed for finding explicit expressions for constraint forces in multibody systems. After obtaining these reference inputs, in order to test the proposed strategy, the formation control algorithm is designed individually for each agent (AUV) based on its own mathematical model. The proposed coordination framework is tested in numerical simulations considering external disturbances due to ocean currents and realistic models for the sensors. A low-level Model Predictive Control (MPC) is assumed to be embedded to each agent. The existing limitations in their communication are also considered. Results highlight the good performance of the proposed scheme in terms of trajectory tracking and disturbance rejection, with low constraint violations.