Optimal thrusters steering for dynamically reconfigurable underwater vehicles

ABSTRACT

When using a Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV), on-the-fly reconfiguration of the thrusters orientations allows to adjust its propulsion and manoeuvrability capabilities according to the mission progress. To optimise the actuation, the interaction between thrusters due to cross-flows is modelled and included in the thrust related objective function to be maximised. Run-time effective solutions use a sparse look-up table to initialise a fast direct-search local optimisation algorithm. The found thrusters steering configurations show higher thrust gains compared with the traditional fixed ‘vectored’ configuration of currently available ROVs.

KEYWORDS:

• Marine robotics
• reconfigurable underwater vehicle
• propulsion optimisation
• on-line optimisation

Acknowledgments

The authors thank Subsea Tech for providing the technical data of Tortuga 500 underwater vehicle, as well as the CAD views used in certain figures.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 https://www.subsea-tech.com/.

2 https://www.bluerobotics.com/store/thrusters/t200-thruster/.

3 https://www.maplesoft.com/.

Additional information

Funding

This project has been funded with support from ANRT (Association Nationale de la Recherche et de la Technologie) (French National Agency for Research and Technology, CIFRE grant #2015/1232).

Notes on contributors

Maxence Blond

Maxence Blond holds an engineer degree from Polytech, Montpellier (2012) and a Ph.D. from the ‘Information, Structures and System’ doctoral school, University of Montpellier, 2019. His interests lie in underwater robotics.

Daniel Simon

Daniel Simon graduated as an engineer (1976) and doctor–engineer (1980) from the school of mechanics and microtechnologies (ENSMM), Besançon, France. He also received the ‘Habilitation à Diriger des Recherches’ from University of Nice Sophia-Antipolis in 1998. He is research scientist with INRIA since 1980, and is now a member of the CAMIN team shared by INRIA and LIRMM, Montpellier, France. His main interests deal with feedback control and real-time computing co-design, with applications in robotics and bio-medical engineering.

Vincent Creuze

Vincent Creuze received the Ph.D. degree in robotics from University Montpellier 2, Montpellier, France, in 2002 and the ‘Habilitation à Diriger des Recherches’ from University of Montpellier in 2017. He is currently an Associate Professor with the University of Montpellier, attached to the Robotics Department of LIRMM (Montpellier Laboratory of Computer Science, Robotics, and Microelectronics). His research interests include design, modelling and control of underwater robots, as well as underwater computer vision, mainly applied to underwater archaeology and marine biology.

Olivier Tempier

Olivier Tempier received his Master of Engineering in electrical engineering and industrial data processing in 1999. From 1999 to 2006, he worked within industry as a R&D engineer (demining robot, radar system, maritime security...) since 2006, he works in the Robotics Department of the LIRMM (Montpellier Laboratory of Computer Science, Robotics, and Microelectronics) as a research engineer in charge of robotics experiments.