Station keeping control of underwater robots using disturbance force measurements

Station keeping control of remotely operated vehicles is crucial in the successful completion of underwater missions of work class robotic vehicles. The conventional method of station keeping using the vehicle pose/velocity measurement introduces delay in vehicle control and often leads to instability. In this paper, we present a novel method for measuring the underwater disturbances and controlling the robot for station keeping using a feed-forward control strategy. A strain-gauge based disturbance force measurement is proposed here with suitable algorithms to measure the forces acting on the vehicle due to external disturbances. Using the dynamic models, the vehicle response is predicted and a feed-forward control is implemented for station keeping. The controller activates corrective control action even before the vehicle responds to the disturbances. The performance of the controller is analyzed through simulation studies as well as hardware-in-loop tests. Results show that this approach is an effective alternative for conventional station keeping control of underwater vehicles.