Este trabalho apresenta aspectos teóricos e práticos relevantes do desenvolvimento do Sistema de Navegação e Controle (SNC) a ser implementado em um Veículo Submarino Semi-Autônomo (VSSA), tipo não carenado e auto propelido, que está em desenvolvimento e construção na Escola Politécnica da USP, para a Petrobrás. Os três graus de liberdade horizontais são controlados para seguirem trajetórias pré-definidas, enviadas como sinais de referência para navegação por uma estação de apoio localizada na superfície, responsável pela guiagem do veículo. Os sinais de referência enviados são acústicos propagados pela água. A implementação física do SNC e o controle dos três graus de liberdade verticais não fazem parte do escopo deste trabalho. O SNC consiste em um controlador determinístico, um seguidor de trajetórias linear quadrático alimentado por um vetor de estados estimado assintoticamente. Por segurança, em caso de falha de algum sensor, e para filtrar ruídos nos sinais medidos, um estimador de estados de ordem plena é utilizado conjuntamente. Pela simplicidade de síntese e implementação, esta arquitetura de controle é considerada a melhor alternativa para capacitar o VSSA a executar os movimentos semi-autônomos desejados. As técnicas de controle utilizadas requerem a linearização do modelo matemático não-linear que descreve o comportamento dinâmico do veículo. O modelo é obtido de maneira simplificada. Os resultados são gerados por simulações com o modelo não-linear. / This work presents theoretical and practical aspects of the development of the Navigation and Control System (NCS) to be implemented into a Petrobras\' Semi-Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (SAUV), an open-frame and self-propelled type, which is being developed and built at Escola Politécnica of the University of São Paulo (EPUSP). The three horizontal Degrees-of-Freedom (DoF) are controlled so that they can follow a pre-defined trajectory sent as navigation reference signals to the NCS by a support ship, responsible for the guidance of the vehicle and placed on the ocean surface. Reference signals are sent as acoustic signals through the ocean water. The implementation and the control of the three vertical DoF are not in the scope of the present work. The NCS is based upon a deterministic controller, a Linear Quadratic (LQ) trajectory follower fed by an asymptotically estimated state vector, even though all the state variables are available by direct measurents. For safety, if some sensor fails, and for filtering noise on measured signals, a full-order state estimator is also designed. Since the LQ controller architecture is rather simple to design and implement, it was elected to control the SAUV manoeuvers. The control techniques require a linear model of the dynamics of the vehicle. Hence, a linearization procedure is applied to the system of nonlinear differential equations that describe the dynamic behavior of the SAUV. The results presented are provided by computer-aided simulations with the nonlinear model of the plant.

Of all of the bodies in the solar system, Europa is perhaps the most enticing. Based on several lines of evidence, Europa, a moon of Jupiter, is believed to have an ocean of liquid water beneath several kilometers of ice. This ocean is likely in contact with Europa's rocky core, making Europa's ocean one of the most likely places for life to exist in the solar system outside of Earth. This thesis provides an outline of the technology required for a mission that travels to Europa, penetrates the ice, and explores the ocean below. In order to create this outline, this thesis first provides background on previous missions to the outer planets. A discussion of the science requirements is presented and then a value system by which designs are evaluated is developed. Current technologies and the design alternatives are presented and evaluated using the value system. A final mission architecture and concept of operations are then presented. / Master of Science

Sampling small scale ocean turbulence is one of the most important problems in oceanography. The turbulence can be near the noise level of current microscale profiling techniques and these techniques do not provide spatially and temporally dense measurements and can be labor intensive. A 5 beam acoustic Doppler current profiler (VADCP) can more accurately measure three components of fluid velocity in a column. By towing such a device in a sensor platform, called a towfish, one may measure turbulent mixing in a vertical swath of the ocean. If the towfish attitude is not precisely regulated, however, the turbulence measurements can be irreversibly corrupted. A two-part tow that includes a depressor weight between the towing vessel and the towfish can provide some degree of disturbance rejection. Passive devices alone, however, can not meet the performance requirements for measuring ocean turbulence. This thesis presents a design for a two-stage towing system which will be used to measure ocean turbulence. The focus is on the towfish, which includes independently actuated stern planes for pitch and roll disturbance rejection. The thesis also describes design and analysis of an active control system to precisely regulate the pitch and roll attitude of a streamlined towfish. A three dimensional numerical model is presented and a PID controller is developed to provide active attitude stabilization. The effect of random depressor motions on the towfish dynamics is assessed for both the uncontrolled and the feedback-controlled case. The numerical investigation also considers variations in parameters such as tether length and CG location. / Master of Science

The work presented in the thesis concerns the design and development of a novel thruster fault diagnosis and accommodation system (PDAS) for overactuated, open-frame underwater vehicles. The remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) considered in this thesis have four thrusters for motion in the horizontal plane with three controllable degrees of freedom (DoF). Due to the redundancy resulting from this configuration, for the case of a partial fault or a total fault in a single thruster it is possible to reallocate control among operable thrusters in order that the ROV pilot is able to maintain control of the faulty ROV and to continue with missions. The proposed PDAS consists of two subsystems: a fault diagnosis subsystem (FDS) and a fault accommodation subsystem (FAS). The FDS uses fault detector units to monitor thruster states. Robust and reliable interrogation of thruster states, and subsequent identification of faults, is accomplished using methods based on the integration of selforganising maps and fuzzy logic clustering. The FAS uses information provided by the FDS to perform an appropriate redistribution of thruster demands in order to accommodate faults. The FAS uses a hybrid approach for control allocation, which integrates the pseudoinverse method and the fixed-point iterations method. A control energy cost function is used as the optimisation criteria. In fault-free and faulty cases the FAS finds the optimal solution, which minimises this criteria. The concept of feasible region is developed in order to visualise thruster velocity saturation bounds. The PDAS provides a dynamic update of saturation bounds using a complex three-dimensional visualisation of the feasible region (attainable command set), such that the ROV pilot is informed with the effects of thruster fault accommodation, incorporated in the new shape of the attainable command set. In this way the ROV pilot can easy adapt to newly created changes and continue the mission in the presence of a fault. The prototype of the PDAS was developed in the MATLAB environment as a Simulink model, which includes a nonlinear model of an ROV with 6 DOF, propulsion system and a hand control unit. The hand control unit was simulated in hardware using a joystick as input device to generate command signals. Different fault conditions are simulated in order to investigate the performance of the PDAS. A virtual underwater world was developed, which enabled tuning, testing and evaluation of the PDAS using simulations of two underwater vehicles (FALCON, Seaeye Marine Ltd. and URIS, University of Girona) in a 'realistic' underwater environment. The performance of the PDAS was demonstrated and evaluated via tank trials of the FALCON ROV in QinetiQ Ocean Basin Tank at Haslar, where the existing control software was enhanced with the PDAS algorithm. The results of real-world experiments confirmed the effectiveness of the PDAS in maintaining vehicle manoeuvrability and in preserving the vehicle mission in the presence of thruster faults.

Atualmente está aumentando a necessidade de utilização de veículos submersíveis não tripulados nos meios aquáticos, tanto para observação científica, como também para monitoramento de obras de engenharia. As posições destes veículos são controladas, em geral, manualmente o que torna essas operações tarefas longas e cansativas aos seus pilotos. Uma alternativa que simplifica estas operações é a utilização, quando necessário, de um sistema automático de posição para aliviar o piloto de funções básicas. Para o desenvolvimento de um sistema de posicionamento automático eficiente é necessário um modelo matemático para a dinâmica do veículo, que envolve o conhecimento dos parâmetros hidrodinâmicos que caracterizam o comportamento do veículo, principalmente em casos onde o veículo possua formas geométricas complexas, sendo assim torna-se compulsório a realização de métodos experimentais para a determinação dos coeficientes hidrodinâmicos do modelo. Na Faculdade de Tecnologia de Jahu vem se desenvolvendo desde 1999 a segunda versão de um veículo submersível não tripulado para utilização em ambiente fluvial denominado VSNT JAÚ II. Este trabalho propõe a utilização de métodos experimentais para a obtenção de alguns dos coeficientes hidrodinâmicos do veículo, no qual são considerados massa adicional e amortecimento viscoso que serão estimados através de ensaios de decaimento livre, utilizando um modelo em escala reduzida e técnicas de processamento digital de imagem. Para estimativa dos coeficientes de massa adicional e amortecimento viscoso o método proposto é baseado método dos mínimos quadrados e separa os movimentos do veículo em dois planos, vertical e horizontal, considerando termos de acoplamento nos movimentos nesses planos. / Unmanned underwater vehicles they have been used continually by the planet in spite of the difficulties of your operation, both for scientific observation, but also for monitoring of engineering works. The positions of these vehicles are controlled, in general, which makes manually they work long and tiring to their pilots. An alternative that simplifies this operation is the use of an automatic system of position to relieve the pilot of basic functions. For the development of an efficient of automatic positioning system it is necessary a mathematical model of the vehicle, it is necessary the knowledge of the hydrodynamic parameters that characterize the behavior of the vehicle. Those parameters are difficult to obtain through theoretical procedures, in cases where the vehicle possesses complex forms, and then experimental methods are used. In Faculdade de Tecnologia de Jahu it comes the developing since 1999 the second version of an unmanned underwater vehicle for use in fluvial environments denominated VSNT JAÚ II. This work proposes the use of an experimental method for the obtaining of some of the hydrodynamic coefficients of the Vehicle, based on rehearsals of free decay, using a model in reduced scale and techniques of digital image processing. The proposed procedure separates the movements of the vehicle in two plans, vertical and horizontal, considering joining terms in the movements in those plans.

O desenvolvimento de arquiteturas de controle para veículos submarinos é uma tarefa complexa. Estas podem ser caracterizadas pelos seguintes atributos: tempo real, multitarefa, concorrência e comunicações distribuídas em rede. Neste cenário, existem múltiplos processos sendo executados em paralelo, possivelmente distribuídos, e se comunicando uns com os outros. Neste contexto, o modelo comportamental pode levar a fenômenos como deadlocks, livelocks, disputa por recursos, entre outros. A fim de se tentar minimizar os efeitos de tais dificuldades, neste trabalho será apresentado um método para checagem de modelos de arquiteturas de controle de veículos submarinos baseado em Especificações Formais. A linguagem de especificação formal escolhida foi CSP-OZ, uma combinação de CSP e Object-Z. Object-Z é uma extensão orientada a objetos da linguagem Z para a especificação de predicados, tipicamente pré e pós condições, além de invariantes de dados. CSP (Communicating Sequential Process) é uma álgebra de processos desenvolvida para descrever modelos comportamentais de processos paralelos. A checagem de modelos especificados formalmente consiste na análise das especificações para verificar se um sistema possui certas propriedades através de uma busca exaustiva em todos os estados em que este pode entrar durante sua execução. Neste contexto, é possível checar corretude, livelocks, deadlocks, etc. Além disso, pode-se relacionar duas especificações diferentes a fim de se checar relações de refinamento. Para as especificações, o verificador de modelos FDR da Formal Systems Ltd. será utilizado. A implementação é desenvolvida utilizando um perfil da linguagem Ada denominado RavenSPARK, uma junção do perfil Ravenscar (desenvolvido na Universidade de York) com a linguagem SPARK (um subconjunto da linguagem Ada desenvolvido pela Praxis, Inc.). O Ravenscar é um perfil para desenvolvimento de processos, e portanto os processos de CSP, incluindo seus canais de comunicação, podem ser facilmente criados. Por outro lado, SPARK é uma linguagem onde podem ser inseridos predicados para os dados (originalmente especificados em Object-Z) utilizando anotações da própria linguagem. A linguagem SPARK possui uma ferramenta, o Examinador, que pode checar códigos de modelos baseado nestas anotações. Em resumo, o método proposto permite tanto a checagem de modelos em CSP quanto a checagem no nível de código. Para isso, as especificações em Object-Z devem inicialmente ser convertidas em um código na linguagem SPARK juntamente com suas respectivas anotações, para que então a checagem do modelo possa ser realizada no código. O desenvolvimento de uma arquitetura de controle reativa para um ROV denominado VSOR (Veículo Submarino Operado Remotamente) é utilizado como exemplo de uso do método proposto. Toda a arquitetura de controle é codificada utilizando a linguagem Ada com o perfil RavenSPARK e embarcada em um computador do tipo PC104 com o sistema operacional de tempo real VxWorks, da Windriver, Inc. / The development of control architectures for Underwater Vehicles is a complex task. These control architectures might be chracterised by the following attributes: real-time, multitasking, concurrency, and distributed over communication networks. In this scenario, we have multiple processes running in parallel, possibly distributed, and engaging in communication between each other. In this context, the behavioural model might lead to phenomena like deadlocks, livelocks, race conditions, among others. In order to try to minimize the effects of such difficulties, in this work a method for model checking control architectures of underwater vehicles based on formal specifications is presented. The chosen formal specification language is CSP-OZ, a combination of CSP and Object-Z. Object-Z is an object-oriented extension of Z for the specification of predicates, typically, data pre, post and invariant conditions. CSP (Communicating Sequential Process) is a process algebra developed to describe behavioural models of parallel process. The model checking of formal specifications is a task of reasoning on specifications in which a system verifies certain properties by means of an exhaustive search of all possible states that a system could enter during its execution. In this context, it is possible to check about correctness, liveness, deadlock, etc. Also, one can relate two different specifications in order to check a refinement ordering. For the specifications, the model checker FDR of Formal Systems Ltd. is utilised. The implementation is developed using an ADA language profile called RavenSPARK, a union of the Ravenscar profile (developed at the University of York) and the SPARK language (a subset of the ADA language developed by Praxis, Inc.). The Ravenscar is a profile for developing processes, so CSP processes including their message channels can be easily deployed. On the other hand, SPARK is a language where one can insert data predicates (originally specified in Object-Z) using language annotations. The SPARK language has a tool, the Examiner, that can model check code based on these annotations. In summary, the proposed method allows model checking of CSP processes but does not allow any checking in the code level. On the contrary, Object-Z specifications must first be converted into a SPARK language code, together with proper annotations, and then model checking can be realised in code. The development of a real-time reactive control architecture of an ROV named VSOR (Veiculo Submarino Operado Remotamente) is used as an example of the use of the proposed method. The whole control architecture is coded using the ADA Language with the RavenSPARK profile and deployed into a PC104 cpu system running the Vxworks real-time operating system of Windriver, Inc.

O emprego de técnicas de controle para veículos submarinos, envolve muitas questões de interesse prático e teórico. Neste trabalho apresenta-se o desenvolvimento de um sistema de controle inteligente e adaptativo a ser aplicado na navegação de veículos submarinos semi-autônomos (VSSAs). Utiliza-se uma técnica baseada no controle nebuloso (fuzzy), visando gerenciar o veículo submarino no controle de velocidade, profundidade, orientação e na evasão de obstáculos. A operação de veículos submarinos usando a técnica proposta, exige a definição, análise e tratamento de um vasto conjunto de comandos complexos manipulados pelo controlador. A metodologia utilizada divide a ação de controle em 3 fases. A primeira trata do posicionamento inicial do veículo submarino, a segunda fase trata da sua navegação e a fase final de gerenciar o comportamento do veículo próximo da posição-objetivo. A implementação funcional do controlador e dividida em módulos. O primeiro módulo informa o comportamento do ambiente e do próprio veículo, fornecendo dados iniciais sobre seu posicionamento e sua profundidade; um segundo módulo trata da presença de obstáculos em diferentes direções com dados fornecidos por sonares e assim determina as ações para a evasão de obstáculos. A ação de controle e estabelecida usando conceitos da teoria nebulosa (fuzzy) no universo de discurso, através de variáveis lingüísticas e de regras de inferência definidas a partir do conhecimento de especialistas, que envolvem a imprecisão característica do comportamento humano. As informações no final do processo são concentradas, de forma que a ação de controle e determinada para que possa enviar sinais de controle aos atuadores. / The design of underwater vehicle involves a very large number of practical and theoretical problems. In this work, it is tackled the development of a intelligent and adaptive controller, to be used in the navigation of semi-autonomous underwater vehicles (SAUV). To achieve this goal, a technique based on the fuzzy theory was employed to control the vehicle movements, including the evasion of obstacles. The operation of underwater vehicles using this approach demands the definition and treatment of a vast set of complex commands, manipulated by the controller. The control action is subdivided into three stages, the first one deals the control action during the initial positioning of the vehicle, a second stage deals with the navigation itself and the final stage deals the control action when the vehicle is close to the objective-position. The functional development of the controller was also subdivided into modules. The first module deals with the management of input data such as environmental disturbances and initial vehicle position, such as depth of the vehicle. The second module deals the detection of obstacles in different directions and the optimal evasion action to avoid collisions. The control action during a mission is established using concepts of the Fuzzy theory in the universe of speech, through linguistic variables and rules of inference defined from the knowledge of specialists, involving the characteristic imprecision of human behavior. In the end of the process, the information is defuzzificated, so that control actions are determined, allowing a practical implementation.

The primary objective of this research is to investigate the viability of magnetic anomaly localization with an autonomous underwater vehicle, using a genetic algorithm (GA). The localization method, first proposed by Sheinker. et al. 2008, is optimized here for the case of a moving platform. Extensive magnetic field modeling and algorithm simulation has been conducted and yields promising results. Field testing of the method is conducted with the use of the Ocean Floor Geophysics Self-Compensating Magnetometer (SCM). Extensive out-of-water field testing is conducted to validate the ability to measure a target signal in a uniform NED frame as well as to validate the effectiveness of the GA. The outcome of the simulation closely matches the results of the conducted field tests. Additionally, the SCM is fully integrated with FAU’s Remus 100 AUV and preliminary in-water testing of the system has been conducted. / Includes bibliography. / Thesis (M.S.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2017. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

The widespread use of laser line scanners (LLS) aboard unmanned underwater vehicles in the last decade has opened a unique window to a series of ecological and military applications. Variability of underwater light fields and complexity of light contributions reaching the receiver pose a challenge for target detection of LLS under different environmental conditions. The interference of photons not originating at the target (e.g. water path, bottom) can often be minimized (e.g., time-gated systems) but not excluded. Radiative transfer models were developed to better discriminate noise components from signal contributions at the receiver for two continuous LLS: Real-time Ocean Bottom Optical Topographer (ROBOT) and Fluorescence Imaging Laser Line Scanner (FILLS). Numerical experiments using forward Monte Carlo methods were designed to explore the effects of diverse water turbidities and bottom reflectances on ROBOT and FILLS measurements. Interference due to solar light on LLS target detection was also examined. Reliability of radiative transfer models was tested against standard models (Hydrolight) and aquarium measurements. In general a green laser was the best all around choice to detect targets using both LLS sensors. Based on signal-to-noise (S/N) values, performance of ROBOT for target detection was greater (two-fold) than FILLS because of the lower contribution of path photons in ROBOT than FILLS. When ROBOT was located at 1 m above the target, path radiance contributions (noise) were reduced up to 25-fold in clear waters (0.3 mg m-3) with respect to turbid waters (5 mg m-3). Since ROBOT was more discriminative of bottom reflectance discontinuities (high-contrast transitions) than FILLS, algorithms are proposed to retrieve contrasting man-made targets such mines.

This research addresses the problem of allocating closely spaced targets to multiple autonomous underwater vehicles (AUV) in the presence of constant ocean currents. The main difficulty of this problem is that the non-holonomic vehicles are constrained to move along forward paths with bounded curvatures. The Dubins model is a simple but effective way to handle the kinematic characteristics of AUVs. It gives complete characterization of the optimal paths between two configurations for a vehicle with limited turning radius moving in a plane at constant speed. In the proposed algorithm, Dubins paths are modified to include ocean currents, resulting in paths defined by curves whose radius of curvature is not constant. To determine the time required to follow such paths, an approximate dynamic model of the AUV is queried due to the computational complexity of the full model. The lower order model is built from data obtained from sampling the full model. The full model is used in evaluating the final tour times of the sequences generated by the proposed algorithm to validate the results. The proposed algorithm solves the task allocation problem with market-based auctions that minimize the total travel time to complete the mission. The novelty of the research is the path cost calculation that combines a Dubins model, an AUV dynamic model, and a model of the ocean current. Simulations were conducted in Matlab to illustrate the performance of the proposed algorithm using various number of task points and AUVs. The task points were generated randomly and uniformly close together to highlight the necessity for considering the curvature constraints. For a sufficiently dense set of points, it becomes clear that the ordering of the Euclidean tours are not optimal in the case of the Dubins multiple travelling salesmen problem. This is due to the fact that there is little relationship between the Euclidean and Dubins metrics, especially when the Euclidean distances are small with respect to the turning radius. An algorithm for the Euclidean problem will tend to schedule very close points in a successive order, which can imply long maneuvers for the AUV. This is clearly demonstrated by the numerous loops that become problematic with dense sets of points. The algorithm proposed in this thesis does not rely on the Euclidean solution and therefore, even in the presence of ocean currents, can create paths that are feasible for curvature bound vehicles. Field tests were also conducted on an Iver2 AUV at the Avila Pier in California to validate the performance of the proposed algorithm in real world environments. Missions created based on the sequences generated by the proposed algorithm were conducted to observe the ability of an AUV to follow paths of bounded curvature in the presence of ocean currents. Results show that the proposed algorithm generated paths that were feasible for an AUV to track closely, even in the presence of ocean current.