On One Problem of Identifying a Model of an Uninhabited Underwater Vehicle

Abstract

The problem of constructing a control system for underwater vehicles is relevant due to the growing scope of their application, including acting in autonomous modes. Moreover, it is required to have an ability to use these devices both in quasi-stationary and close to pulsed mode. Thus, it is necessary to develop a mathematical model of vehicle’s dynamics for autonomous operations of an unmanned underwater vehicle (UUV), which would describe the dynamics of motion as close as possible to the real one. The current paper is denoted to the identification problem of UUV model. A comparative analysis of UUV dynamics models was carries out, among which a model that uses added masses of liquid to describe hydrodynamic forces was selected. For UUV of a symmetrical streamlined shape with a small displacement and performing plane movements, it is assumed that the influence of the attached fluid manifests itself in the form of an increase in mass and moments of inertia. A control system designed to stabilize the device was built on the model, after which it was adjusted on the existing sample of the UUV. The considered theoretical and experimental methods for identifying the dynamic model of the UUV turned out to be competitive with each other and gave comparable results for calculating the added masses. The carried out full-scale experiments confirms that the proposed method for estimating the added masses is quite effective for constructing a control system designed to operate in a given motion mode.