An advanced control architecture for underwater vehicles

In this article, we present ALCAUV (Advanced Low-level Control Architecture for Underwater Vehicles), a tool for designing, developing and tuning real-time subsea robot controllers. ALCAUV is adapted to both autonomous vehicles and teleoperated vehicles (tethered or untethered). An ALCAUV prototype is currently being used in the framework of Ifremer´s Vortex project. The tool´s general architecture is described, as well as the controller model. The software system used for the controller integrates both object and synchronous technology. The ALCAUV´s current development state is presented, along with the first results obtained during Vortex missions