Dynamic analysis and two-time scale control for underwater vehicle-manipulator systems

Underwater vehicle-manipulator (UVM) system becomes popular for various applications although it has complexity in control and analysis when compared to the vehicle itself. To resolve the complexity, firstly, thorough kinematic and dynamic analysis on the whole UVM system is performed. Then, the whole dynamics is divided into several meaningful terms. A robust coordinated motion control algorithm for autonomous UVM systems is considered next based on the analysis of divided dynamics. Since the vehicle has relatively smaller bandwidth than manipulators, active damping control with two-time scale approach for the manipulator is proposed. Using this algorithm, the manipulator controller can cover the vehicle state. The performance of the proposed algorithm is verified by computer simulations.