Experiments in dynamic control of autonomous marine vehicles using acoustic modems

Marine robots are an increasingly attractive means for observing and monitoring in the ocean, but underwater acoustic communication (“acomms”) remains a major challenge, especially for real-time control. Packet loss occurs widely, bit rates are low, and there are significant delays. We consider here...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Gilbertson, Eric W., Leighton, Joshua C., Cheung, Mei Yi, Hover, Franz S., Reed, Brooks
Other Authors: Joint Program in Oceanography/Applied Ocean Science and Engineering
Format: Article
Language:en_US
Published: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 2015
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/97476
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2621-7633
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3138-7346
Description
Summary:Marine robots are an increasingly attractive means for observing and monitoring in the ocean, but underwater acoustic communication (“acomms”) remains a major challenge, especially for real-time control. Packet loss occurs widely, bit rates are low, and there are significant delays. We consider here strategies for feedback control with acomms links in either the sensor-controller channel, or the controller-actuator channel. On the controller-actuator side we implement sparse packetized predictive control (S-PPC), which simultaneously addresses packet-loss and the data rate limit. For the sensor-controller channel we study a modified information filter (MIF) in a Linear Quadratic Gaussian (LQG) control scheme. Field experiments were carried out with both approaches, regulating crosstrack error in a robotic kayak using acomms. Outcomes with both the S-PPC and MIF LQG confirm that good performance is achievable.