Lateral Line Inspired Pressure Feedforward for Autonomous Underwater Vehicle Control

It is believed that the lateral line found in most fish and some other aquatic organisms plays an important role in many behaviors by providing hydrodynamic information about the surrounding fluid. In this paper, a lateral line inspired underwater vehicle control design is proposed with a feedforward element from pressure sensor arrays; the goal of this research is to improve maneuvering accuracy for underwater exploration and environmental monitoring. Using least squares techniques, pressure measurements at multiple locations form a closed periodic B-spline approximation of the pressure distribution over the vehicle profile. Hydrodynamic forces acting on the vehicle are then estimated and passed to the controller for improved trajectory tracking performance. Simulation tests for planar motions are conducted using a reference pressure distribution provided by a two-dimensional hydrodynamic model.