Design of Underwater Vehicles for High Performance Control

Design considerations for high performance control of remotely operated underwater vehicles are presented, focussing on the performance limits imposed by navigation, actuators, dynamic uncertainty, control strategies, and the dynamics of the vehicle. As coupling between translation and attitude present a major impediment to high bandwidth control, techniques for reducing this coupling are presented. In-water test data is presented for the new JASON Junior vehicle currently being designed and built at the Deep Submergence Laboratory.