Professional Documents
Culture Documents
, 42:118–126 (2002)
SYNOPSIS. The Draper Laboratory Vorticity Control Unmanned Undersea Vehicle (VCUUV) is the first
mission-scale, autonomous underwater vehicle that uses vorticity control propulsion and maneuvering. Built
as a research platform with which to study the energetics and maneuvering performance of fish-swimming
propulsion, the VCUUV is a self-contained free swimming research vehicle which follows the morphology
and kinematics of a yellowfin tuna. The forward half of the vehicle is comprised of a rigid hull which houses
batteries, electronics, ballast and hydraulic power unit. The aft section is a freely flooded articulated robot
tail which is terminated with a lunate caudal fin. Utilizing experimentally optimized body and tail kinematics
from the MIT RoboTuna, the VCUUV has demonstrated stable steady swimming speeds up to 1.2 m/sec and
aggressive maneuvering trajectories with turning rates up to 75 degrees per second. This paper summarizes
the vehicle maneuvering and stability performance observed in field trials and compares the results to
predicted performance using theoretical and empirical techniques.
118
MANEUVERING AND STABILITY IN ROBOTIC TUNA 119
FIG. 1. The Draper Laboratory Vorticity Control UUV (VCUUV) shown assembled and during autonomous operation in a test tank. The
vehicle is shown executing a turning maneuver with full body deflection.
energetically taxing as conventional means of gener- the components required to execute autonomous mis-
ating large side forces (such as thrusters) in varying sions: onboard energy, actuation and control. Figure 2
conditions. Fish are not poor performers at low veloc- illustrates how the vehicle length is divided equally
ities like conventional vehicles. In fact, speed is not a between a rigid forebody which houses the electronics,
requirement for maneuverability as illustrated with the batteries, ballast and hydraulic unit, and a flexible ar-
rigid-bodied boxfish (Walker, 2000) and the fast start ticulated tail-caudal fin assembly.
FIG. 2. VCUUV system layout illustrating the major subsystems of the vehicle. The cutaway view shows the arrangements of components
internal to the pressure hull and the tail drive structure underlying the tail surface skin and scales.
120 J. M. ANDERSON AND N. K. CHHABRA
on overall performance due to the small projected ar- The maximum speed attained in the field trials was
eas involved compared to the tail and caudal fin. Bar- 1.25 m/sec (2.4 knots) at 1 Hz tail oscillation while
rett (1996) also produced good results with a tuna plat- under heading control (closed loop control using com-
form which also ignored these elements. pass feedback). Without heading control, the maxi-
The vehicle has been successfully operated in shal- mum speed attained was 1.19 m/sec (2.3 knots). We
low, controlled environments to evaluate its propul- do not report statistical variances on our results as
sion/maneuvering system. Vehicle design and fabri- speed measurements were only made during a few se-
cation issues including sizing of actuators, design of lect runs by the addition of a small external speed
articulated body, pressure hull design, and on-board sensor mounted to the top of the pressure hull, pro-
intelligence, sensors and power are described in detail truding beyond the estimated boundary layer thick-
by Anderson and Kerrebrock (1997, 1999). The ness. The speed sensor was a custom designed cali-
VCUUV was designed to operate in freshwater envi- brated free-wheeling propeller which was instrumented
ronments at depths less than 10 m at typical live ani- with four magnets attached to its shaft. A Hall-effect
mal cruise speeds near one body length per second. sensor was used to count the rotations of the propeller
shaft to obtain speed. Calibration by timed distance
FIELD TRIALS confirmed that the velocity error was less than 5%.
Early field trials (April–June, 1998, at University of The measured vehicle speed was 16% less than that
New Hampshire test tank) focused on engineering di- predicted by Strouhal scaling of the MIT RoboTuna
agnostics and tuning of the hydraulic system and con- results which may be due to differences in the kine-
trol system performance. Hydraulic pressure, control matics between the VCUUV tail motion and that of
gains, and desired tail kinematics were adjusted to give the RoboTuna. Although morphologically similar, the
good tracking performance for frequencies up to 1 Hz. VCUUV and RoboTuna are not identical platforms.
FIG. 3. VCUUV heading angle during a full deflection coasting FIG. 4. VCUUV heading angle during repeated turning (zigzag ma-
turn. The vehicle swims from rest up to full speed. At point A, the neuver). The vehicle accelerates from rest to full speed and begins
vehicle stops swimming and assumes full body curvature for a coast- a repeated series of 908 heading changes every 10 sec. As in hard
ing turn which ends at point B in a full stop. Two curves are shown, turn results in Figure 3, the compass tends to overshoot during high
one corresponding to the gyro estimate (the integral of the gyro rate rate events due to gimbal movement.
measurement), and the compass measurement. The compass oscil-
lates freely in a gimbal mechanism during high rate events as illus-
trated at the beginning (A) and end of the turn (B).
operation in highly perturbed environments and launch
needed to understand these tools can be found in the FIG. 6. Plan (view from above) and elevation (view from side)
books by Hoerner (1965, 1975) and Newman (1977). views of the VCUUV geometry modeled for hydrodynamic coeffi-
These references have gathered theory and experimen- cient derivation. The body and fin shapes were simplified slightly
as shown to conform to the inputs of the hydrodynamic analysis
tal data from various sources and presented them in a tools.
concise manner.
added mass. The added-mass tensor mij is constant for horizontal plane. These are computed as (Humphreys
a given vehicle geometry and can be computed from and Watkinson, 1992):
standard formulas based upon shape of the body, e.g.,
M9w [Z9q 1 m9]
ellipsoidal (Kochin et al., 1964), spheroidal, cylindri- Gv 5 1 2 (2)
cal, or strip theory (Newman, 1977). The added mass Z9w M9q
tensor reflects the potential flow contribution to both
r 2 m9]
N9[Y9
Gh 5 1 2 v
the acceleration and the velocity coefficients. The fol- . (3)
lowing equations give the added mass contributions to Y9N9
v r
Configuration Gv Gh
loop vehicle stability on closed-loop control system perfor- Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers. 1952. Nomen-
mance: An analysis of four AUV concepts. A.R.A.P. Group, clature for treating the motion of a submerged body through
Proc. Oceans ’92 Conference, October, 1992, 533–538. fluid, SNAME Technical and Research Bulletin No. 1–5, April,
Kochin, N. E., I. A. Kibel, and N. V. Roze. 1964. Theoretical hy- 1952.
drodynamics. Interscience Publishers, New York. Walker, J. A. 2000. Does a rigid body limit maneuverability? J. Exp.
Naval Coastal Systems Center. 1983. Hydrodynamic Analysis Tech- Biol. 203:3,391–3,396.
niques (HYDAT). Panama City, Florida, March 1983. Webb, P. W. 1994. The biology of fish swimming. In L. Maddock,
Newman, J. N. 1977. Marine hydrodynamics. MIT Press, Cam-
Q. Bone, and J. M. V. Rayner (eds.), Mechanics and physiology
bridge, Massachusetts.
Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers. 1989. Analysis of animal swimming, pp. 45–62. Cambridge University Press,
of Turning Ability. In E. V. Lewis (ed.), Principles of naval Cambridge, UK.
architecture, Second revision, Vol. III, motions in waves and Wolfgang, M. J., J. M. Anderson, M. A. Grosenbaugh, D. K. Yue,
controllability, pp. 209–215. The Society of Naval Architects and M. S. Triantafyllou. 1999. Near-body flow dynamics in
and Marine Engineers, New Jersey. swimming fish. J. Exp. Biol. 202:2,303–2,327.