Dynamic modelling and control of underwater vehicle with multi-manipulator system

A general dynamic model is presented in this dissertation to formulate the equations of motion of an Underwater Robotic Vehicle (URV) with multiple manipulators using Kane's equations. This dynamic model can cope with any number of manipulators with any specified links, and which is different from our former research results for a single manipulator underwater vehicle. Based on the derived general dynamic model, a nonlinear feedback control scheme is designed and applied to precisely coordinate control of the vehicle base and the attached manipulators.; For an underactuated (URV) system, it is further proven that the underactuated URV systems are usually subject to nonholonomic constraints, and thus the motion of the URV are not restricted in configuration space. The constraints of the underactuated URV have to be transformed and to be expressed in generalized coordinates before we do analyses on the integrability to determine the holonomy of the systems. To drive the entire URV system to a desired destination, a piecewise smooth control scheme is presented in this dissertation. The dynamic coupling is utilized by turning the orientation angles and decomposing the control commands into several operations. This work not only extends the usefulness of underactuated URVs, but also offers potential recovery of fully actuated vehicles that have been damaged or otherwise are malfunctioning.