Incorporation of novel underwater thrusters into vehicle control systems

A new type of underwater thruster is studied which is inspired by the natural locomotion of squid and other cephalopod. The thruster is similar to synthetic jet actuators used for flow control studies, but operates on different length and frequency scales. A hybrid simulation experiment has been designed to test the performance of this thruster in a static environment, under dynamic, unsteady driving signals. The hybrid simulation implements actual thrust production on a virtual vehicle model and attempts to control the trajectory of that vehicle. It was determined that this type of thruster being controlled with a basic PD control algorithm demonstrates excellent position tracking in a wide range of maneuvers. The thruster showed that it could produce controlling forces accurately on several scales of thrust. However, the maneuvering system was subject to an appreciable position overshoot at high vehicle oscillation frequencies, due to unmodeled thruster settling time.