Design and Experimental Realization of Adaptive Control Schemes for an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle

Research on Autonomous Underwater Vehicle(AUV) has attracted increased attention of control engineering community in the recent years due to its many interesting applications such as in Defense organisations for underwater mine detection, region surveillance, oceanography studies, oil/gas industries for inspection of underwater pipelines and other marine related industries. However, for the realization of these applications, effective motion control algorithms need to be developed. These motion control algorithms require mathematical representation of AUV which comprises of hydrodynamic damping, Coriolis terms, mass and inertia terms etc. To obtain dynamics of an AUV, different analytical and empirical methods are reported in the literature such as tow tank test, Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) analysis and on-line system identification. Among these methods, tow-tank test and CFD analysis provide white-box identified model of the AUV dynamics. Thus, the control design using these methods are found to be ineffective in situation of change in payloads of an AUV or parametric variations in AUV dynamics. On the other hand, control design using on-line identification, the dynamics of AUV can be obtained at every sampling time and thus the aforesaid parametric variations in AUV dynamics can be handled effectively. In this thesis, adaptive control strategies are developed using the parameters of AUV obtained through on-line system identification. The proposed algorithms are verified first through simulation and then through experimentation on the prototype AUV. Among various motion control algorithms, waypoint tracking has more practical significance for oceanographic surveys and many other applications. In order to implement, waypoint motion control schemes, Line-of-Sight (LoS) guidance law can be used which is computationally less expensive. In this thesis, adaptive control schemes are developed to implement LoS guidance for an AUV for practical realization of the control algorithm. Further, in order to realize the proposed control algorithms, a prototype AUV is developed in the laboratory. The developed AUV is a torpedo-shaped in order to experience low drag force, underactuated AUV with a single thruster for forward motion and control planes for angular motion. Firstly, the AUV structure such as nose profile, tail profile, hull section and control planes are designed and developed. Secondly, the hardware configuration of the AUV such as sensors, actuators, computational unit, communication module etc. are appropriately selected. Finally, a software framework called Robot Operating System (ROS) is used for seamless integration of various sensors, actuators with the computational unit. ROS is a software platform which provides right platform for the implementation of the control algorithms using the sensor data to achieve autonomous capability of the AUV. In order to develop adaptive control strategies, the unknown dynamics of the AUV is identified using polynomial-based Nonlinear Autoregressive Moving Average eXogenous (NARMAX) model structure. The parameters of this NARMAX model structure are identified online using Recursive Extended Least Square (RELS) method. Then an adaptive controller is developed for realization of the LoS guidance law for an AUV. Using the kinematic equation and the desired path parameters, a Lyapunov based backstepping controller is designed to obtain the reference velocities for the dynamics. Subsequently, a self-tuning PID controller is designed for the AUV to track these reference velocities. Using an inverse optimal control technique, the gains of the selftuning PID controller are tuned on-line. Although, this algorithm is computationally less expensive but there lie issues such as actuator constraints and state constraints which need to be resolved in view of practical realization of the control law. It is also observed that the proposed NARMAX structure of the AUV consists of redundant regressor terms. To alleviate the aforesaid limitations of the Inverse optimal self-tuning control scheme, a constrained adaptive control scheme is proposed that employs a minimum representation of the NARMAX structure (MR-NARMAX) for capturing AUV dynamics. The regressors of the MR-NARMAX structure are identified using Forward Regressor Orthogonal Least Square algorithm. Further, the parameters of this MRNARMAX model structure of the AUV are identified at every sampling time using RELS algorithm. Using the desired path parameters and the identified dynamics, an error objective function is defined which is to be minimized. The minimization problem where the objective function with the state and actuator constraints is formulated as a convex optimization problem. This optimization problem is solved using quadratic programming technique. The proposed MR-NARMAX based adaptive control is verified in the simulation and then on the prototype AUV. From the obtained results it is observed that this algorithm provides successful tracking of the desired heading. But, the proposed control algorithm is computational expensive, as an optimization problem is to be solved at each sampling instant. In order to reduce the computational time, an explicit model predictive control strategy is developed using the concept of multi-parametric programming. A Lyapunov based backstepping controller is designed to generate desired yaw velocity in order to steer the AUV towards the desired path. This explicit model predictive controller is designed using the identified NARMAX model for tracking the desired yaw velocity. The proposed explicit MPC algorithm is implemented first in simulation and then in the prototype AUV. From the simulation and experimental results, it is found that this controller has less computation time and also it considers both the state and actuator constraints whilst exhibiting good tracking performance

Methods of system identification, parameter estimation and optimisation applied to problems of modelling and control in engineering and physiology

Mathematical and computer-based models provide the foundation of most methods of engineering design. They are recognised as being especially important in the development of integrated dynamic systems, such as “control-configured” aircraft or in complex robotics applications. These models usually involve combinations of linear or nonlinear ordinary differential equations or difference equations, partial differential equations and algebraic equations. In some cases models may be based on differential algebraic equations. Dynamic models are also important in many other fields of research, including physiology where the highly integrated nature of biological control systems is starting to be more fully understood. Although many models may be developed using physical, chemical, or biological principles in the initial stages, the use of experimentation is important for checking the significance of underlying assumptions or simplifications and also for estimating appropriate sets of parameters. This experimental approach to modelling is also of central importance in establishing the suitability, or otherwise, of a given model for an intended application – the so-called “model validation” problem. System identification, which is the broad term used to describe the processes of experimental modelling, is generally considered to be a mature field and classical methods of identification involve linear discrete-time models within a stochastic framework. The aspects of the research described in this thesis that relate to applications of identification, parameter estimation and optimisation techniques for model development and model validation mainly involve nonlinear continuous time models Experimentally-based models of this kind have been used very successfully in the course of the research described in this thesis very in two areas of physiological research and in a number of different engineering applications. In terms of optimisation problems, the design, experimental tuning and performance evaluation of nonlinear control systems has much in common with the use of optimisation techniques within the model development process and it is therefore helpful to consider these two areas together. The work described in the thesis is strongly applications oriented. Many similarities have been found in applying modelling and control techniques to problems arising in fields that appear very different. For example, the areas of neurophysiology, respiratory gas exchange processes, electro-optic sensor systems, helicopter flight-control, hydro-electric power generation and surface ship or underwater vehicles appear to have little in common. However, closer examination shows that they have many similarities in terms of the types of problem that are presented, both in modelling and in system design. In addition to nonlinear behaviour; most models of these systems involve significant uncertainties or require important simplifications if the model is to be used in a real-time application such as automatic control. One recurring theme, that is important both in the modelling work described and for control applications, is the additional insight that can be gained through the dual use of time-domain and frequency-domain information. One example of this is the importance of coherence information in establishing the existence of linear or nonlinear relationships between variables and this has proved to be valuable in the experimental investigation of neuromuscular systems and in the identification of helicopter models from flight test data. Frequency-domain techniques have also proved useful for the reduction of high-order multi-input multi-output models. Another important theme that has appeared both within the modelling applications and in research on nonlinear control system design methods, relates to the problems of optimisation in cases where the associated response surface has many local optima. Finding the global optimum in practical applications presents major difficulties and much emphasis has been placed on evolutionary methods of optimisation (both genetic algorithms and genetic programming) in providing usable methods for optimisation in design and in complex nonlinear modelling applications that do not involve real-time problems. Another topic, considered both in the context of system modelling and control, is parameter sensitivity analysis and it has been found that insight gained from sensitivity information can be of value not only in the development of system models (e.g. through investigation of model robustness and the design of appropriate test inputs), but also in feedback system design and in controller tuning. A technique has been developed based on sensitivity analysis for the semi-automatic tuning of cascade and feedback controllers for multi-input multi-output feedback control systems. This tuning technique has been applied successfully to several problems. Inverse systems also receive significant attention in the thesis. These systems have provided a basis for theoretical research in the control systems field over the past two decades and some significant applications have been reported, despite the inherent difficulties in the mathematical methods needed for the nonlinear case. Inverse simulation methods, developed initially by others for use in handling-qualities studies for fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters, are shown in the thesis to provide some important potential benefits in control applications compared with classical methods of inversion. New developments in terms of methodology are presented in terms of a novel sensitivity based approach to inverse simulation that has advantages in terms of numerical accuracy and a new search-based optimisation technique based on the Nelder-Mead algorithm that can handle inverse simulation problems involving hard nonlinearities. Engineering applications of inverse simulation are presented, some of which involve helicopter flight control applications while others are concerned with feed-forward controllers for ship steering systems. The methods of search-based optimisation show some important advantages over conventional gradient-based methods, especially in cases where saturation and other nonlinearities are significant. The final discussion section takes the form of a critical evaluation of results obtained using the chosen methods of system identification, parameter estimation and optimisation for the modelling and control applications considered. Areas of success are highlighted and situations are identified where currently available techniques have important limitations. The benefits of an inter-disciplinary and applications-oriented approach to problems of modelling and control are also discussed and the value in terms of cross-fertilisation of ideas resulting from involvement in a wide range of applications is emphasised. Areas for further research are discussed

Actas de las XXXIV Jornadas de Automática

Postprint (published version