Saving Energy with Buoyancy and Balance Control for Underwater Robots with Dynamic Payloads

摘要

We have developed an underwater robot that can pick up and place objects during an autonomous underwater mission. This robot will have changing weight and dynamics during a mission. We have developed an efficient method for buoyancy control to achieve adaptation to weight changes without the need to increasing the work of the robot's thruster system. In this paper we describe the mechanism used for buoyancy and balance control. We also describe the adaptive control algorithms and data from physical experiments.