Application of 2 1/2 D visual servoing to underwater vehicle station-keeping

Abstract

Describes a method to station keep an underwater vehicle with respect to a fixed planar target, using a single on-board video camera. The method used is a modification of the 2 1/2 D visual servoing technique introduced by Malls et al. (1999), that takes into account the restrictive controllability of the vehicle due to its thrusters' configuration. The scheme has been applied to a six degree-of-freedom (DOF) nonlinear dynamic model of the work class ROV ANGUS 003, whose hydrodynamic parameters were experimentally derived. Simulation results of successful station-keeping tasks in the presence of sea current are shown, as well as preliminary experimental results in a test tank on a Cartesian robot emulating two DOF of the ANGUS model.