Classes of Control Architectures for AUV: A brief survey

This paper provides a brief survey on the control architectures used in the underwater system and robotics research for AUV application. Advantages and disadvantages of each scheme are discussed briefly in the context of performance evaluation, design flexibility and extensibility, sensor or command fusion and integration, robustness and effectiveness of task modules. There are many schemes available and are usually categorised into classes: hierarchical, heterarchical, behaviour-based and hybrid architectures. A new control architecture for AUV is proposed in this paper. The brief survey and the proposed control architecture is a subset of investigation on the effective control architecture for Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) system to be implemented in USM’s Robotic Research Group (URRG)’s hybrid ROV/AUV project. Keyword: AUV’s control architecture, hierarchical, behaviour-based , hybrid architectures