Experimental Verification of a Coordinated Path-Following Strategy for Underactuated Marine Vehicles

Area of Science:

• Robotics
• Marine Engineering
• Control Systems

Background:

• Coordinated control of multiple underactuated marine vehicles is challenging.
• Path following in the presence of ocean currents requires robust guidance strategies.
• Achieving desired formations necessitates synchronized motion and inter-vehicle coordination.

Purpose of the Study:

• To experimentally verify a novel coordinated path following strategy for underactuated marine vehicles.
• To assess the strategy's effectiveness in achieving formation control and rejecting ocean currents.
• To compare experimental results with high-fidelity simulations.

Main Methods:

• Development of a coordinated path following strategy.
• Implementation of an integral line-of-sight guidance for path steering.
• Velocity adjustment based on along-path distance for coordination.
• Experimental verification using three autonomous underwater vehicles.
• High-fidelity hardware-in-the-loop simulations for benchmarking.

Main Results:

• Successful experimental demonstration of coordinated path following for multiple autonomous underwater vehicles.
• Validation of the integral line-of-sight guidance's ability to reject constant ocean currents.
• Confirmation that velocity adjustment effectively achieves along-path coordination for formation.
• Experimental results closely matched simulation benchmarks, validating the strategy's performance.

Conclusions:

• The proposed coordinated path following strategy is experimentally validated for underactuated marine vehicles.
• The strategy effectively enables vehicles to achieve formations while robustly handling ocean currents.
• The integration of guidance and coordination mechanisms provides a reliable solution for multi-vehicle marine operations.