Dynamic Autonomous Surface Vehicle Control and Applications in Environmental Monitoring

TL;DR

This paper develops a comprehensive framework for controlling autonomous surface vehicles in environmental monitoring, accounting for external forces like wind and currents to ensure precise navigation during survey operations.

Contribution

It introduces a novel control framework that models external forces and tunes vehicle control to maintain accurate paths in challenging environmental conditions.

Findings

Effective force modeling improves trajectory accuracy

Control tuning reduces deviations caused by environmental forces

Framework enhances reliability of autonomous surface vehicle surveys

Abstract

This paper addresses the problem of robotic operations in the presence of adversarial forces. We presents a complete framework for survey operations: waypoint generation,modelling of forces and tuning the control. In many applications of environmental monitoring, search and exploration, and bathymetric mapping, the vehicle has to traverse in straight lines parallel to each other, ensuring there are no gaps and no redundant coverage. During operations with an Autonomous Surface Vehicle (ASV) however, the presence of wind and/or currents produces external forces acting on the vehicle which quite often divert it from its intended path. Similar issues have been encountered during aerial or underwater operations. By measuring these phenomena, wind and current, and modelling their impact on the vessel, actions can be taken to alleviate their effect and ensure the correct trajectory is followed.