Virtual decomposition control for an underwater vehicle carrying a n-DoF manipulator

Within the framework of the Italian national project MARIS (Marine Autonomous Robotics for InterventionS), in this paper a control law based on a virtual decomposition approach for underwater vehicles carrying a n-degrees-of-freedom manipulator is presented. The control law, already known in the literature, has been customized for the specific set-up of MARIS. Being based on the Newton-Euler formulation, among the advantages of the virtual-decomposition-based approach, the possibility to develop an adaptive controller by resorting to a recursive formulation. The same framework allows to assign end-effector generalized forces, i.e., forces and moments, to be used in interaction control schemes such as, for example, direct force control or cooperative transportation of an object. Numerical simulations on a realistic mathematical model validate the achieved performances.