A Tube-based MPC Scheme for Interaction Control of Underwater Vehicle Manipulator Systems

TL;DR

This paper introduces a robust tube-based nonlinear Model Predictive Control scheme for underwater vehicle manipulator systems, ensuring force/torque interaction control while respecting constraints and handling disturbances.

Contribution

It presents a novel tube-based NMPC approach specifically designed for UVMS, addressing constraints, disturbances, and unmodeled dynamics in underwater interaction tasks.

Findings

Simulation confirms effective force/torque control.

The method respects state and input constraints.

Robustness against disturbances is demonstrated.

Abstract

Over the last years, the development of Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUV) with attached robotic manipulators, the so-called Underwater Vehicle Manipulator System (UVMS), has gained significant research attention, due to the ability of interaction with underwater environments. In such applications, force/torque controllers which guarantee that the end-effector of the UVMS applies desired forces/torques towards the environment, should be designed in a way that state and input constraints are taken into consideration. Furthermore, due to their complicated structure, unmodeled dynamics as well as external disturbances may arise. Motivated by this, we proposed a robust Model Predicted Control Methodology (NMPC) methodology which can handle the aforementioned constraints in an efficient way and it guarantees that the end-effector is exerting the desired forces/torques towards the environment. Simulation results verify the validity of the proposed framework.