This dissertation concerns modelling the dynamics of underwater gliders and application of the model to analysis of glider dynamics, control, navigation, and design. Underwater gliders are a novel type of autonomous underwater vehicle that glide by controlling their buoyancy and attitude using internal actuators. We develop a first principles based model of the dynamics of a general underwater ...

It has been 20 years since the concept of the Autonomous Ocean Sampling Network (AOSN) was first introduced. This vision has been brought closer to reality with the introduction of underwater gliders.While in terms of functionality the underwater glider has shown to be capable of meeting the AOSN vision, in terms of reliability there is no communitywide hard evidence on whether persistent prese...

Underwater gliders are robust ocean sensor platforms characterized by high reliability and endurance. Due to their relatively low speed, the motion of underwater gliders is strongly affected by ocean currents, which provides data to estimate the depth averaged flow velocity. The glider computerized tomography (Glider CT) algorithm reconstructs a depth-averaged flow field from the navigation err...

Autonomous underwater gliders are robust and widelyused ocean sampling platforms that are characterized by their endurance, and are one of the best approaches to gather subsurface data at the appropriate spatial resolution to advance our knowledge of the ocean environment. Gliders generally do not employ sophisticated sensors for underwater localization, but instead dead-reckon between set wayp...

I am in terested in establishing a framework for studying dynamics and control of underwater gliders. I am focussing on dedicated gliding vehicles that hav e the ability to change mass (or v olume) for buoyancy control and to redistribute mass for attitude control. Later on it is of in terest to consider vehicles that use glide maneuvers to complement more traditional methods of control actuati...

Augmenting speech recognition to an unmanned Underwater Vehiclea underwater glider, its movements is based on the buoyancy propelled for float and fixed wing stabilization in the gliders body. Collision is the main limitation of the underwater glider. A solution has been brought about using the fin system. To this a microprocessor based speech recognition is coupled. The system is designed to e...

rapidly reach a specified waypoint or to maximize the ability to map a measured field, both in the presence of significant currents. For rapid transit in a frozen velocity field, direct minimization of travel time provides a trajectory ‘‘ray’’ equation. A simpler routing algorithm that requires less information is also discussed. Two approaches are developed to maximize the mapping ability, as ...

We present two reduced-dimensional, noncanonical Hamiltonian models for a neutrally buoyant underwater vehicle coupled to an internal moving mass. It is expected that these models will be useful in designing nonlinear control laws for underwater gliders as well as for spacecraft, atmospheric re-entry vehicles, and other vehicles which use internal moving mass actuators. To illustrate, we invest...