Hydrobatic autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) can be efficient in range and speed, as well as agile in maneuvering. They can be beneficial in scenarios such as obstacle avoidance, inspections, docking, and under‐ice operations. However, such AUVs are underactuated systems—this means exploiting the system dynamics is key to achieving elegant hydrobatic maneuvers with minimum controls. This paper explores the use of model predictive control (MPC) techniques to control underactuated AUVs in hydrobatic maneuvers and presents new simulation and experimental results with the small and hydrobatic SAM AUV. Simulations are performed using nonlinear model predictive control (NMPC) on the full AUV system to provide optimal control policies for several hydrobatic maneuvers in Matlab/Simulink. For implementation on AUV hardware in robot operating system, a linear time varying MPC (LTV‐MPC) is derived from the nonlinear model to enable real‐time control. In simulations, NMPC and LTV‐MPC shows promising results to offer much more efficient control strategies than what can be obtained with PID and linear quadratic regulator based controllers in terms of rise‐time, overshoot, steady‐state error, and robustness. The LTV‐MPC shows satisfactory real‐time performance in experimental validation. The paper further also demonstrates experimentally that LTV‐MPC can be run real‐time on the AUV in performing hydrobatic maneouvers.

Autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) are utilized in a variety of unmanned missions, such as environmental surveys or guarding coastal waters. Currently, the most commonly used energy storage is a secondary battery pack. A potential solution for increasing the range even further on larger AUVs is to utilize hybrid fuel cell/battery systems. Fuel cell systems can have a significantly increased specific energy compared to batteries and are now starting to become well-developed technologies. However, in an underwater environment, both hydrogen and oxygen need to be stored for the fuel cell. This study considers the sizing of a hybrid fuel cell/battery system with respect to operational power profiles, i.e., how to select the best combination of fuel cell stack, battery pack, and reactant storage, and compares its volume and weight with conventional battery systems. This article presents a sizing strategy developed for this purpose, where the optimum combination of fuel cell output power and battery size is analyzed. The strategy is implemented on power profiles from real AUV missions. The sizing strategy will outline the techniques to reach the optimum hybrid configuration capable of meeting the power demand at any time of the mission. Results show that for longer missions, the volume of the hybrid system becomes significantly lower than for the battery system, meaning that the endurance can be increased thanks to the use of fuel cells.

This paper outlines challenges and opportunities in operating underwater robots (so-called AUVs) on a seaweed farm. The need is driven by an emerging aquaculture industry on the Swedish west coast where large-scale seaweed farms are being developed. In this paper, the operational challenges are described and key technologies in using autonomous systems as a core part of the operation are developed and demonstrated. The paper presents a system and methods for operating an AUV in the seaweed farm, including initial localization of the farm based on a prior estimate and dead-reckoning navigation, and the subsequent scanning of the entire farm. Critical data from sidescan sonars for algorithm development are collected from real environments at a test site in the ocean, and the results are demonstrated in a simulated seaweed farm setup.

Hydrobatic AUVsare very agile, and can perform challenging maneuvers that encompass the full 0 $^{\circ}$ –360 $^{\circ}$ flight envelope. Such AUVs can be beneficial in novel use cases in ocean production, environmental sensing, and security, by enabling new capabilities for docking, inspection, or under-ice operations. To further explore their capabilities in such scenarios, it is crucial to be able to model their flight dynamics over the full envelope, which includes strong nonlinear effects and turbulence at high angles of attack. With accurate and efficient simulation models, new hydrobatic maneuvers can be generated and control strategies can be developed. Therefore, this article contributes with a strategy to perform efficient and accurate simulations of hydrobatic maneuvers in real time. A multifidelity hydrodynamic database is synthesized by combining analytical, semiempirical, and numerical methods, thereby capturing fluid forces and moments over the full envelope. A component buildup workflow is used to assemble a nonlinear flight dynamics model using lookup tables generated from the database. This simulation model is used to perform real-time simulations of advanced hydrobatic maneuvers. Simulation results show agreement with literature and experiment, and the simulator shows utility as a development tool in designing new maneuvers and control strategies.