Engineering Commons^™

Experiments In The Coordinated Control Of An Underwater Arm/Vehicle System, Timothy W. Mclain, Stephen M. Rock, Michael J. Lee

Faculty Publications

The addition of manipulators to small autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) can pose significant control challenges due to hydrodynamic interactions between the arm and the vehicle. Experiments conducted at the monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) using the OTTER vehicle have shown that dynamical interactions between an arm and a vehicle can be very significant. For the experiments reported in this paper, a single-link "arm" was mounted on OTTER. Tests showed that for 90-degree, two-second repetitive slews of the arm, the vehicle would move as much as 18 degrees in roll and 14 degrees in yaw when no vehicle control was …