Experimental Test-Bed for Multi-Vehicle Control, Navigation and Communication

In this paper we describe the design and evaluation of the prototype vehicle for a new test-bed developed for multi-vehicle control, navigation and communication. The vehicle is designed for high reliability and easy recon guration using smart sensor and actuator interfaces. It is passively stable in pitch and roll and is actuated by ve thrusters. The actuators allow for full control of the remaining four degrees of freedom. We are developing the multi-vehicle test-bed to test control algorithms that demonstrate coordinated and cooperative behavior of a network of vehicles for adaptive ocean sampling and other applications. In our design of coordinating control laws, we are inspired by the remarkable capabilities of schooling sh. To illustrate, we describe a multi-vehicle approach to gradient climbing. The simple control algorithm that we present allows two vehicles that observe one another to climb a gradient under the constraint that each vehicle can only take single point measurements.