Hierarchical Compliance-Control-Based Docking of a UVMS

Abstract

The viability of underwater vehicle-manipulator systems (UVMS) in underwater intervention missions is heavily reliant on safety. For safe operations, a UVMS should specifically be able to both avoid dangers and interact safely with the environment. While task-priority controllers have been extensively used to incorporate set-based safety-tasks for a UVMS, only recent controllers can ensure safe interaction of several tasks by shaping the impedance of the system. In this paper, a hierarchical impedance-based controller is extended with set-based tasks in a practical setting, to obtain a controller that can achieve both these desirable properties. To verify, the proposed solution is applied on an articulated intervention-AUV in a docking use case with an obstacle-avoidance task in simulation.