Underwater robot groups safely navigate using vision and limit-aware controls
Vision-based Underwater Formation Control With Input Saturations via Barrier Lyapunov Functions
Robotics
Summary
Controlling underwater robot groups is hard since they need to avoid hitting each other and operate safely with limited sensors and motor power. The authors developed a new way for these robots to use cameras to control their formation without needing to talk to each other. Their method makes sure the robots don’t crash, respects physical limits on their motors, and adapts if sensors temporarily give less information than expected. They tested their approach through realistic computer simulations to show it works as intended.
What this means in practice
- •For underwater vehicle operators: Enable teams to control robot formations underwater using only on-board cameras and safe, limited motor commands without inter-vehicle communication.
- •For robotics simulation engineers: Use the proposed control framework within Gazebo simulations to test underwater multi-robot behaviors respecting sensing and actuator constraints.
Authors
Nicola De Carli, João Zenário, Victor Nan Fernandez-Ayala, Dimos V. Dimarogonas
Abstract
In this work, we propose a communication-free framework for vision-based formation control of fully actuated underwater robots subject to sensing constraints, collision-avoidance requirements, and input saturations. Recentered barrier Lyapunov functions encode sensing and collision-avoidance constraints, while command-filtered backstepping extends the design to the second-order vehicle dynamics. The resulting control objective is enforced through a quadratic program that explicitly accounts for actuator limits. Conservative sensing domains provide margins from the physical limits and are adaptively relaxed when necessary, allowing temporary violation of the conservative bounds. The proposed approach is validated through realistic Software-in-the-Loop (SITL) simulations in Gazebo.