Underwater Gliders in the Coastal Ocean: Planning, Control, Design, and Field Trials

Underwater gliders are robust and long endurance ocean sampling platforms that are increasingly being deployed in coastal waters. The coastal ocean is a dynamic and uncertain environment with significant currents that can challenge the mobility of these efficient (but slow) gliders. 

To address this challenge, a series of planar path planning approaches were developed to improve robustness in currents, energy efficiency, or time of flight for maneuvers on the length scale of a few turn radii of the vehicle. Nonlinear optimal control theory (the Minimum Principle, and its geometric interpretation via the Hodograph) was used to study these problems and to develop path synthesis algorithms. 

An underwater glider was developed to serve as a platform for field testing the proposed planning approaches. The vehicle was designed to be fast and maneuverable in significant currents by employing a novel pneumatic buoyancy control system and a cylindrical internal moving mass for attitude control. 

Biography:

Artur Wolek is a doctoral candidate at the Department of Aerospace and Ocean Engineering at Virginia Tech, working under the direction of Dr. Craig Woolsey. He is primarily interested in guidance, control and dynamics of autonomous systems, including marine robots and unmanned aerial vehicles.