Towards autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) through sensor-based high level control

For underwater vehicles to be self-sufficient in an a priori unknown environment, feedback from the environment through altitude sensors is essential. This paper deals with a high level generic and global control method to pilot a non-linear system such as underwater vehicles taking into account sensory data from exteroceptive sensors such as acoustic altitude ones. The method relies on the task function approach and appears to be robust against noisy sensory data. It is based on the reduction of the control problem to the regulation to null value of a task function defined by the user. Also, it allows one to define the minimal architecture for altitude sensors