A Control System For Unmanned Surface Vehicle Based On ARM

Unmanned surface vehicle has wide applications in the protection of the Marine environment and the development of Marine resources. It will complete kinds of tasks by carrying different sensor systems, and it is one of the key means to monitor the marine environment, obtain the Marine hydrological data, explore the marine resources and forecast the marine disasters. Also it plays an important role in military applications, it is mainly used to protect the harbors, hunt the mines and be a target boat. This control system is designed based on a model boat in order to develop the unmanned surface vehicles for marine scientific research.ARM technology, GPS technology, wireless communication technology and PWM control technology are used in the development of this control system. This system consists of two parts: the onboard system and the monitoring system on the shore. The design and development of the onboard system is based on ARM, the GPS module, wireless communication module and the steering gear controller are integrated with the ARM module. System on the shore includes Host computer and wireless communication module. Then controlling and monitoring the unmanned surface vehicle is done.The specific work of this system's development is the construction of the hardware platform and the design of the software related to the hardware platform. The main work of the hardware construction is circuit designation of the ARM microprocessor motherboard, the GPS receiver card, the wireless communication module and the steering gear controller. The onboard system software was programmed based on assemble language and the C language using the ADS tools, the software's function is collecting GPS data, wireless communication and controlling the steering gear, the function of the software on the shore is wireless communication and analyzing the GPS data based on LabVIEW.The unmanned surface vehicles'application on marine scientific research and the domestic and abroad application examples are introduced in the first part of the paper, and then the technical theories related to the control system are stated, includes: embedded system theory, ARM microprocessor and GPS positioning principles. Then the frame-chat of the unmanned surface vehicle's control system is raised, the designation of the hardware and the software of the system is described.The hardware designation includes the selection of each module, making the test circuit. The main content of the software is operating serial port to accomplish various functions, besides the software need to process, display and preserve the GPS data.At last, the unmanned surface vehicle control system was tested on the standing water. The test's results indicate that the control system has the ability to control the speed and the course of the unmanned surface vehicle, and also it is capable of displaying and preserving the course.