Modeling, simulation and control of underwater vehicles

Underwater vehicles have been developed over many decades for exploration of seabed, discovery and exploitation of marine resources. Maintaining control of underwater vehicles for various missions at seas requires a good understanding of the underwater vehicle hydrodynamics and control characteristics. In order to get students involved in the development of control systems for underwater vehicles it is necessary to have a working underwater vehicle with a fully functioned controller to do design and implement missions. This paper presents the modelling, simulation and control of a newly-built underwater vehicle for academic and research purposes. A series of small underwater vehicles have been designed and built at the Australian Maritime College (University of Tasmania) within the maritime engineering course final year programmes. This includes the development of mathematical models of these small underwater vehicles for simulation and control design purposes. This paper focuses on theoretical modelling, simulation, control design and testings of the AMC newly-built ROV/AUV.