Fault-tolerant control of an autonomous underwater vehicle

Autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) are poised to become an indispensable tool for ocean exploration, underwater research and development, and military activities. One of the key elements of these vehicles is dependability; there must be some form of fault recovery/fault tolerance in the control system. In this work, we use an approach involving synthesis of motions in degrees of freedom (DOF) that are unactuated, by combining motions in DOF that are actuated. The objective is to determine the usefulness of the method for a typical streamlined vehicle which is controlled by control surfaces rather than thrusters. We find that the method has difficulties in its present form because of the righting moment designed into the vehicle, but it is functional on a modified model of the vehicle