Development Of Underwater Glider Motion Control System

Underwater glider is a new kind of system combining technologies of buoy andunderwater robotics. It can get motivation by changing net buoyancy, and directioncan be controlled by changing the center of gravity.This article briefly describes the developments of underwater glider at home andabroad, and the origin and significance of the subject is mentioned; then make anoverall overview to the underwater glider and describes the working principle ofunderwater glider, system design and structure of each part and so on.On this basis, this paper has designed and studied motion control system of theunderwater glider. Based on requirements of glider control system, first select theMTI attitude sensor, KELLER pressure sensors and other actuators, then design andproduce the hardware circuit controller circuit and driver circuit. To ensure thereliability of the control system hardware to work a long time, the32-bit ARMprocessors is chosen. To meet the requirements of communications and controlbetween different modules in glider system, this paper designs a driver circuit.Meanwhile TF file system is designed to record data of glider’s motion controlprocess, the data recorded is useful for further optimize the software and hardwareand provide data support for the glider. Attitude adjustment mechanism captures thedistance and the center of gravity position by potentiometer; to ensure effectivecontrol of the tilt and rotation of the glider. The net buoyancy of glider can becalculated by value of air pressure measured by the buoyancy-driver, through this waywe can control floating and diving of glider more effectively. The glider can achievecross-section gliding motion by coordination work of the two agencies.According to the working principle and section underwater gliding processes, itdesigns software for underwater glider which mainly consists of two parts: the glidercontrol software and upper computer system software. The glider control softwaredivide into detection board programming design and control panel boardprogramming design. Detection board mainly completes Iridium communications,data acquisition from observing classes of sensors, master-slave communications andfile systems. Main control board completes master-slave communications, dataacquisition from control sensors, behavioral decision-making and task execution andfile systems. The upper computer system software is an Iridium shore station system programed by LabVIEW, which contains of the design of human-machine interface,Iridium communications and file system.Finally, the control system designed in this paper accepts a series of flumeexperiments to verifying feasibility of the attitude adjustment mechanism,buoyancy-driven institutions and other modules. Then glider accepts a cross-sectionaltest in the reservoir, Thousand-island lake, South China Sea. All these have proved itsrationality of hardware circuits and software control. Underwater glider is a new kind of system combining technologies of buoy andunderwater robotics. It can get motivation by changing net buoyancy, and directioncan be controlled by changing the center of gravity.This article briefly describes the developments of underwater glider at home andabroad, and the origin and significance of the subject is mentioned; then make anoverall overview to the underwater glider and describes the working principle ofunderwater glider, system design and structure of each part and so on.On this basis, this paper has designed and studied motion control system of theunderwater glider. Based on requirements of glider control system, first select theMTI attitude sensor, KELLER pressure sensors and other actuators, then design andproduce the hardware circuit controller circuit and driver circuit. To ensure thereliability of the control system hardware to work a long time, the32-bit ARMprocessors is chosen. To meet the requirements of communications and controlbetween different modules in glider system, this paper designs a driver circuit.Meanwhile TF file system is designed to record data of glider’s motion controlprocess, the data recorded is useful for further optimize the software and hardwareand provide data support for the glider. Attitude adjustment mechanism captures thedistance and the center of gravity position by potentiometer; to ensure effectivecontrol of the tilt and rotation of the glider. The net buoyancy of glider can becalculated by value of air pressure measured by the buoyancy-driver, through this waywe can control floating and diving of glider more effectively. The glider can achievecross-section gliding motion by coordination work of the two agencies.According to the working principle and section underwater gliding processes, itdesigns software for underwater glider which mainly consists of two parts: the glidercontrol software and upper computer system software. The glider control softwaredivide into detection board programming design and control panel boardprogramming design. Detection board mainly completes Iridium communications,data acquisition from observing classes of sensors, master-slave communications andfile systems. Main control board completes master-slave communications, dataacquisition from control sensors, behavioral decision-making and task execution andfile systems. The upper computer system software is an Iridium shore station system programed by LabVIEW, which contains of the design of human-machine interface,Iridium communications and file system.Finally, the control system designed in this paper accepts a series of flumeexperiments to verifying feasibility of the attitude adjustment mechanism,buoyancy-driven institutions and other modules. Then glider accepts a cross-sectionaltest in the reservoir, Thousand-island lake, South China Sea. All these have proved itsrationality of hardware circuits and software control.