AUV navigation around jacket structures II: map based path-planning and guidance

This paper proposes a path-planning and guidance strategy for an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) to perform detailed inspections of jacket structures such as the support legs of offshore platforms. Inspections of such structures are important for maintenance, security, and environmental assessment. These tasks can be carried out at a less cost by using AUVs than through conventional methods. The path-planning method generates a set of waypoints to facilitate the complete coverage of the surface of the target from a constant distance based on the given information about the configurations of both the target and the vehicle. The guidance method actually controls the vehicle such that it follows the waypoints, under the assumption that the position and attitude of the vehicle are being estimated in real time with adequate accuracy. By combining these methods with the localization method we had previously proposed (Maki et al., J Mar Sci Technol [1]) an AUV can perform a fully autonomous observation of jacket structures with prior knowledge of only their configuration. The performance of the method was verified though tank experiments using the AUV Tri-Dog 1. A simple model of a jacket was installed in a test tank, and the vehicle succeeded in inspecting the target.     

Noncontact power supply for seafloor geodetic observing robot system

A new and effective seafloor geodetic observing robot network system, which consists of several submarine stations situated in regions susceptible to interplate earthquakes, has been proposed and is under construction in Japan. Each station, equipped with an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) dock, is connected to a land facility by cables providing power and communication. Near the AUV dock, three or four seafloor reference stations will be set up for geodetic observations. In this system, a noncontact power supply is required for a battery-driven AUV to conduct observations for extended durations. A small, intelligent, efficient, high-power noncontact feed system of 400 W capacity with an inverting efficiency of 77% in salt water has been developed. It has been shown to be effective in a water tank experiment in which the noncontact power supply automatically fed power to an AUV for 3 days.     

Estimation of the hydrodynamic coefficients of the complex-shaped autonomous underwater vehicle TUNA-SAND

Hydrodynamic coefficients strongly affect the dynamic performance of autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs). Thus it is important to have the true values of the coefficients in order to simulate the AUV’s dynamic performance accurately. Although these coefficients can be predicted by many methods, most are only applicable for AUVs with streamlined shapes. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) can be applied to estimate the hydrodynamic coefficients of AUVs with complex shapes. In this study, CFD was applied to estimate the hydrodynamic coefficients of the AUV TUNA-SAND (which stands for terrain-based underwater navigable AUV for seafloor and natural resources development), which has a complex block-like structure. First, the validity of the CFD simulation was verified by comparison with experimental results. Second, the relationships between hydrodynamic loads and motions for all six degrees of freedom were analyzed using the simulated results. Third, the importance of each hydrodynamic coefficient was investigated based on these relationships. There are 16 key damping coefficients that relate to viscosity and 12 key inertial coefficients that relate to the potential flow around TUNA-SAND. Finally, the values of all the key coefficients were obtained and verified by comparing the solutions of the simulated dynamics with the experimental results.     

Application of A* algorithm for real-time path re-planning of an unmanned surface vehicle avoiding underwater obstacles

This paper describes path re-planning techniques andunderwater obstacle avoidance for unmanned surface vehicle （USV）based on multi-beam forward looking sonar （FLS）. Near-optimalpaths in static and dynamic environments with underwaterobstacles are computed using a numerical solution procedure basedon an A algorithm. The USV is modeled with a circular shape in 2degrees of freedom （surge and yaw）. In this paper, two-dimensional（2-D） underwater obstacle avoidance and the robust real-time pathre-planning technique for actual USV using multi-beam FLS aredeveloped. Our real-time path re-planning algorithm has beentested to regenerate the optimal path for several updated frames inthe field of view of the sonar with a proper update frequency of theFLS. The performance of the proposed method was verifiedthrough simulations, and sea experiments. For simulations, theUSV model can avoid both a single stationary obstacle, multiplestationary obstacles and moving obstacles with the near-optimaltrajectory that are performed both in the vehicle and the worldreference frame. For sea experiments, the proposed method for anunderwater obstacle avoidance system is implemented with a USVtest platform. The actual USV is automatically controlled andsucceeded in its real-time avoidance against the stationary underseaobstacle in the field of view of the FLS together with the GlobalPositioning System （GPS） of the USV.     

AUV navigation around jacket structures I: relative localization based on multi-sensor fusion

Underwater jacket structures or support legs of on-water platforms, such as ports and oil rigs, need to be periodically inspected for maintenance, environmental monitoring, and security reasons. Autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) can potentially make these tasks more inexpensive and reliable compared to conventional methods that involve the use of divers and remotely operated vehicles. This paper proposes a robust and practical self-localization method for an underwater vehicle navigating around jacket structures, where the performance of conventional acoustic positioning suffers from multipath degradation. The key idea is to stochastically update the vehicle??s horizontal position and heading relative to the structures using two types of perceptional sensors, sonar and camera, assuming that the configuration of the structure is known. The performance of the method was verified with tank experiments using a jacket mock-up and the AUV Tri-Dog 1.