Publication
Active manipulator-aided docking of underactuated autonomous underwater vehicles
Christian Ernst Siegfried Koch; Miguel Bande Firvida
In: OCEANS MTS/IEEE Conference 2024. OCEANS MTS/IEEE Conference (OCEANS-2024), September 23-26, Halifax, Canada, n.n. 9/2024.
Abstract
Underwater docking stations (DS) are essential for
subsea resident autonomous underwater vehicles (AUV). Commonly, the DS is passive and the AUV is designed with sufficient
maneuverability to achieve docking. In this work, we propose
an alternative approach for an AUV with low maneuverability
by equipping the DS with a robotic manipulator arm to actively catch the approaching vehicle. In particular, we present
kinematic analysis tools tailored towards the docking task and
a dockability metric to determine and evaluate suitable docking
poses. By means of this analysis, an optimal approach path can
be determined for the AUV to follow during the docking process.
To demonstrate the feasibility of active docking, preliminary
experiments were conducted in a control environment using a
hardware-in-the-loop (HITL) simulator and a simple control
architecture. The experimental results are further analyzed to
investigate the limitations of the approach.