본 연구는 빠른 운항 속도와 짧은 운용 시간을 요구하는 임무에 활용될 저가 소형 자율 무인잠수정에 고가 대형 관성 측정 장치를 대신하여 사용할 수 있는 저가 소형 자세 측정 장치 개발 및 성능 검증을 수행하였다. 저가 소형 자세 측정 장치 개발을 위해서 MEMS 기술을 적용한 gyro, accelerometer 및 magnetometer 채택하여 MEMS 기반 하드웨어를 제작하였으며, 좌표 변환 공식과 칼만필터를 적용하여 자세 계산 알고리즘을 구현하였다. 또한 개발된 MEMS 기반 자세 측정 장치에 대한 기본 성능 검증을 위한 지자기센서 검증 시험, 정적 자세 시험, 차량 시험, 운동 모사 장치 시험을 수행하였으며, 각각 시험 결과를 제시하였다. 지자기센서 검증 시험 결과 외부 자기장 보정을 통하면 개발된 MEMS 기반 자세 측정 장치의 측정 결과가 외부 자기장에 강인함을 확인하였으며, 정적자세 시험 및 차량 시험을 통하여 자세 변화가 크지 않는 환경에서 자세 측정 오차가 0.5°/hr 임을 확인하였다. 운동 모사 장치 시험을 통하여 5분 내외 자세 변화가 큰 운동 중에도 자세 측정 오차가 발산하지 않고 1°/hr 이내임을 확인하였다. 상기 시험 결과로부터 개발된 MEMS 기반 자세 측정 장치가 목표 성능인 1°/hr이내 roll, pitch, yaw 오차를 보여주고 있음 확인하였으며, 이로부터 20분 내외 운용시간 동안 정확한 자세 정보 제공 가능성을 확인할 수 있었다.

Underwater robotic vehicles(URVs) are used for various work assignments such as pipe-lining, inspection, data collection, drill support, hydrography mapping, construction, maintenance and repairing of undersea equipment, etc. As the use of such vehicles increases the development of vehicles having greater autonomy becomes highly desirable. The vehicle control system is one of the most critic vehicle subsystems to increase autonomy of the vehicle. The vehicle dynamics is nonlinear and time-varying. Hydrodynamic coefficients are often difficult to accurately estimate. It was also observed by experiments that the effect of electrically powered thruster dynamics on the vehicle become significant at low speed or stationkeeping. The conventional linear controller with fixed gains based on the simplified vehicle dynamics, such as PID, may not be able to handle these properties and result in poor performance. Therefore, it is desirable to have a control system with the capability of learning and adapting to the changes in the vehicle dynamics and operating parameters and providing desired performance. This paper presents an adaptive and learning control system which estimates a new set of parameters defined as combinations of unknown bounded constants of system parameter matrices, rather than system parameters. The control system is described with the proof of stability and the effect of unmodeled thruster dynamics on a single thruster vehicle system is also investigated.

Geomagnetic field signals have potential for use in underwater navigation and geophysical surveys. To map underwater geomagnetic fields, we propose a method that exploits an autonomous surface vehicle. In our system, a magnetometer is rigidly attached to the vehicle and not towed by a cable, minimizing the system’s size and complexity but requiring a dedicated calibration procedure due to magnetic distortion caused by the vehicle. Conventional 2D methods can be employed for the calibration by assuming the horizontal movement of the magnetometer, whereas the proposed 3D approach can correct for horizontal misalignment of the sensor. Our method does not require a supporting crane system to rotate the vehicle, and calibrates and maps simultaneously by exploiting data obtained from field operation. The proposed method has been verified experimentally in inland waters, generating a magnetic field map of the test area that is of much higher resolution than the public magnetic field data.

In this paper, a high performance underwater vehicle which can be manufactured at low cost is designed and fabricated, and its performance is verified through experiments. To improve efficiency, the Myring equation is used to design the appearance and the duct structure including the thruster is planned to increase the propulsion efficiency while reducing the drag force. Through various methods, it is secured stable waterproof performance, and also is devised to have high speed movement and turning performance. The developed underwater vehicle is equipped with a high output BLDC motor to achieve a linear speed of up to 2 m/s and can change direction rapidly with stability through four rudders. The rudders are driven by coupling a timing belt and a pulley by extending the axis of a servo motor, and are equipped at the end of the body to turn heading. In addition, for stable posture control, the roll keeps its internal center of gravity low and maintains its stability due to restoring force. By controlling the four rudders, pitch and yaw are handled by the PID controller and show stable performance. To investigate the horizontal turning performance, it is confirmed that the yaw rate controller is designed and stable yaw rate control is performed.

Acoustic based localization is essential to operate autonomous robotic systems in underwater environment where the use of sensorial data is limited. This paper proposes a localization method using artificial underwater acoustic sources. The proposed method acquires directional angles of acoustic sources using time difference of arrivals of two hydrophones. For this purpose, a probabilistic approach is used for accurate estimation of the time delay. Then, Gaussian sum filter based SLAM technique is used to localize both acoustic sources and underwater vehicle. It is performed by using bearing of acoustic sources as measurement and inertial sensors as prediction model. The proposed method can handle directional ambiguity of time difference based source localization by generating Gaussian models corresponding to possible locations of both front and back sides. Through these processes, the proposed method can provide reliable localization method for underwater vehicles without any prior information of source locations. The performance of the proposed method is verified by experimental results conducted in a real sea environment.

This paper compares methods for attitude estimation of a UUV(Unmanned Underwater Vehicle). Attitude estimation plays a key role in underwater navigation using DVL(Doppler Velocity Log). The paper proposes attitude estimation methods using EKF(Extended Kalman Filter), UKF(Unscented Kalman Filter), and CF(Complementary Filter). It derives methods using the measurements from MEMS-AHRS(Microelectromechanical Systems-Attitude Heading Reference System) and DVL. The methods are used for navigation in a test pool and their navigation performance is compared. The results suggest that even if there is no measurement relative to some absolute landmarks, DVL-only navigation can be useful for navigation in a limited time and range.

Dynamic simulator can be a helpful tool for understanding underwater robotic system's dynamics. However, due to difficulties in modeling dynamics of vehicle/manipulator and interaction between them, dynamic simulation is not easy. This is true even when fluid dynamics are not considered during the simulation. In this paper, two schemes are introduced for dynamic simulation of underwater robotic systems. One is principle of dynamical balance, which is an easy and powerful tool for formulating dynamic equations of composite systems such as underwater vehicle- manipulator system. In the dynamic modeling, this principle gives us the closed-form of dynamic equations on matrix Lie group. The other is geometric integration algorithm, called 4-th order explicit Munthe-Kaas method. By this method, the derived differential equations can be integrated preserving geometric structure. Adopting these two schemes, dynamic simulation of underwater vehicle- manipulator system can be conducted more easily and more reliably.

The thruster is the crucial factor of an underwater vehicle system, because it is the lowest layer in the control loop of the system. In this paper, we propose an accurate and practical thrust modeling for underwater vehicles which considers the effects of ambient flow velocity and angle. In this model, the axial flow velocity of the thruster, which is non-measurable, is represented by ambient flow velocity and propeller shaft velocity. Hence, contrary to previous models, the proposed model is practical since it uses only measurable states. Next, the whole thrust map is divided into three states according to the state of ambient flow and propeller shaft velocity, and one of the borders of the states is defined as Critical Advance Ratio (CAR). This classification explains the physical phenomenon of conventional experimental thrust maps. In addition, the effect of the incoming angle of ambient flow is analyzed, and Critical Incoming Angle (CIA) is also defined to describe the thrust force states. The proposed model is evaluated by comparing experimental data with numerical model simulation data, and it accurately covers overall flow conditions within 2N force error. The comparison results show that the new model's matching performance is significantly better than conventional models'.

본 논문에서는 비 홀로노믹적인 구속조건을 갖는 수중 이동체의 위치 및 자세제어에 관한 제어기법에 대해서 논의한다. 비 홀로노믹시스템은 적분 불가능한 구속조건으로부터 도출되어지는 시스템으로 연속시간영역의 피드백제어로는 평형점에서의 안정화제어가 불가능한 특성을 가지고 있다. 본 연구에서는 속도의 비 홀로노믹 구속조건을 가지는 수중 이동체에 대하여 체인드폼으로 변환하고 변환된 시스템에 대해 백스테핑 제어기법을 적용하여 자세제어를 행하였으며 수치시뮬레이션을 통하여 제어기법의 유용성을 평가하였다.