Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Low-Cost Hybrid Underwater Glider Utilizes Buoyancy and Thruster Actuation: Design and Control

  • Short Paper
  • Published:
Journal of Intelligent & Robotic Systems Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

This paper presents the design and control method of the hybrid underwater glider (HUG) for hands-on investigative engineering. The HUG is a lightweight, small, modular, and low-cost underwater vehicle. The HUG uses a piston buoyancy system to control buoyancy and pitch angle and two thrusters to control yaw angle. A hybrid control method utilizing both a piston buoyancy system and a pair of horizontal thrusters is proposed. The novelty of this study is: 1) a two-hull design to facilitate modularity and ease of assembly, 2) an effective piston buoyancy and thrusters’ mechanism to reduce the weight and size of the vehicle, and 3) a pitch control method based on equilibrium identification to enables a fixable and convenient parameters selection and reduces model dependence. Experimental results show that the HUG design reduces the thrusters’ disturbance to pitch angle control, and pitch angle control with the hybrid control method has less overshoot compared to the PID controller.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

Data Availability

Not applicable.

Code Availability

The code used for this study is available from the corresponding author by request.

References

  1. Webb, D.C., Simonetti, P.J., Jones, C.P.: Slocum: an underwater glider propelled by environmental energy. IEEE J. Ocean. Eng. 26(4), 447–452 (2001)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Eriksen, C.C., Osse, T.J., Light, R.D., Wen, T., Lehman, T.W., Sabin, P.L., Ballard, J.W., Chiodi, A.M.: Seaglider: a long-range autonomous underwater vehicle for oceanographic research. IEEE J. Ocean. Eng. 26(4), 424–436 (2001)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Sherman, J., Davis, R.E., Owens, W.B., Valdes, J.: The autonomous underwater glider “spray.” IEEE J. Ocean. Eng. 26(4), 437–446 (2001)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  4. Liu, Z., Xu, J., Yu, J.: Real-time quality control of data from sea-wing underwater glider installed with glider payload ctd sensor. Acta Oceanol. Sin. 39(3), 130–140 (2020)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  5. Wang, S., Li, H., Wang, Y., Liu, Y., Zhang, H., Yang, S.: Dynamic modeling and motion analysis for a dual-buoyancy-driven full ocean depth glider. Ocean Eng. 187, 106163 (2019)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  6. Zhou, H., Fu, J., Liu, C., Zeng, Z., Yu, C., Yao, B., Lian, L.: Dynamic modeling and endurance enhancement analysis of deep-sea gliders with a hybrid buoyancy regulating system. Ocean Eng. 217, 108146 (2020)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  7. Wang, J., Wu, Z., Tan, M., Yu, J.: Model predictive control-based depth control in gliding motion of a gliding robotic dolphin. IEEE Trans. Syst. Man Cybern. Syst. 51(9), 5466–5477 (2021)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  8. Zhang, F., Ennasr, O., Litchman, E., Tan, X.: Autonomous sampling of water columns using gliding robotic fish: Algorithms and harmful-algae-sampling experiments. IEEE Syst. J. 10(3), 1271–1281 (2016)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  9. Wu, Z., Yu, J., Yuan, J., Tan, M.: Towards a gliding robotic dolphin: Design, modeling, and experiments. IEEE/ASME Trans. Mechatronics 24(1), 260–270 (2019)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  10. Ziaeefard, S., Page, B.R., Pinar, A.J., Mahmoudian, N.: Effective turning motion control of internally actuated autonomous underwater vehicles. J. Intell. & Robot. Syst. 89(1), 175–189 (2018)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  11. Allen, B., Stokey, R., Austin, T., Forrester, N., Goldsborough, R., Purcell, M., von Alt, C.: Remus: a small, low cost auv; system description, field trials and performance results. In: Oceans’ 97. MTS/IEEE Conference Proceedings, vol. 2, pp 994–1000. IEEE (1997)

  12. Stokey, R.P., Roup, A., von Alt, C., Allen, B., Forrester, N., Austin, T., Goldsborough, R., Purcell, M., Jaffre, F., Packard, G., Kukulya, A: Development of the remus 600 autonomous underwater vehicle. In: Proceedings of OCEANS 2005 MTS/IEEE, vol. 2, pp 1301–1304 (2005)

  13. Hackbarth, A., Kreuzer, E., Solowjow, E.: Hippocampus: A micro underwater vehicle for swarm applications. In: 2015 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), pp 2258–2263 (2015)

  14. Amory, A., Maehle, E.: Sembio - a small energy-efficient swarm auv. In: OCEANS 2016 MTS/IEEE Monterey, pp 1–7 (2016)

  15. Hu, R., Lu, D., Xiong, C., Lyu, C., Zhou, H., Jin, Y., Wei, T., Yu, C., Zeng, Z., Lian, L.: Modeling, characterization and control of a piston-driven buoyancy system for a hybrid aerial underwater vehicle. Appl. Ocean Res. 120, 102925 (2022)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  16. Lyu, C., Lu, D., Xiong, C., Hu, R., Jin, Y., Wang, J., Zeng, Z., Lian, L.: Toward a gliding hybrid aerial underwater vehicle: Design, fabrication, and experiments. J. Field Robot. 39(5), 543–556 (2022)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  17. Sang, H., Zhou, Y., Sun, X., Yang, S.: Heading tracking control with an adaptive hybrid control for under actuated underwater glider. ISA Trans. 80, 554–563 (2018)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  18. Li, D., Cao, J., Liu, C., Zeng, Z., Yao, B., Lian, L.: Experimental and simulation study on nonlinear pitch control of seagull underwater glider. Indian J. Geo Mar. Sci. 48(07), 1008–1015 (2019)

    Google Scholar 

  19. Nguyen, N.-D., Choi, H.-s, Han-Sol, J., Huang, J., Lee, J.-H.: Robust adaptive depth control of hybrid underwater glider in vertical plane. Adv. Technol. Innov. 5, 135–146 (2020)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  20. Song, D., Guo, T., Sun, W., Jiang, Q., Yang, H.: Using an active disturbance rejection decoupling control algorithm to improve operational performance for underwater glider applications. J. Coast. Res. 34(3), 724–737 (2018)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  21. Wang, Z., Yu, C., Li, M., Yao, B., Lian, L.: Vertical profile diving and floating motion control of the underwater glider based on fuzzy adaptive ladrc algorithm. J. Mar. Sci. Eng. 9(7), 698 (2021)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  22. Joo, M.G.: A controller comprising tail wing control of a hybrid autonomous underwater vehicle for use as an underwater glider. Int. J. Naval Archit. Ocean Eng. 11(2), 865–874 (2019)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  23. Ullah, B., Ovinis, M., Baharom, M., Ali, S., Javaid, M.: Pitch and depth control of underwater glider using lqg and lqr via kalman filter. Int. J. Veh. Struct. Syst. 10(2), 137–141 (2018)

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Funding

This Research is supported in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under grant 41706108 and in part by the Shanghai Committee Science and Technology Project 20dz1206600 and in part by the Natural Science Foundation of Shanghai under Grant 20ZR1424800 and in partly by the Shanghai Jiao Tong University Scientific and Technological Innovation Funds under Grant 2019QYB04.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Oceanography, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China

    Rui Hu, Yufei Jin, Chenxin Lyu, Tongjin Wei, Junping Li, Yuanbo Bi, Zheng Zeng & Lian Lian

  2. State Key Laboratory of Ocean Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China

    Zheng Zeng & Lian Lian

Authors
  1. Rui Hu
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Yufei Jin
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Chenxin Lyu
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Tongjin Wei
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  5. Junping Li
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  6. Yuanbo Bi
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  7. Zheng Zeng
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  8. Lian Lian
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Contributions

Rui Hu: Conceptualization, Methodology, Formal analysis, Investigation, Writing - Original Draft, Visualization, Software, Validation; Yufei Jin: Validation, Investigation; Chenxin Lyu: Investigation; Tongjin Wei: Investigation; Junping Li: Investigation; Yuanbo Bi: Investigation; Zheng Zeng: Writing - Review and Editing, Resources, Supervision, Project administration, Investigation, Data Curation; Lian Lian: Supervision, Funding acquisition

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Zheng Zeng.

Ethics declarations

Ethics approval

This paper does not contain any studies with human participants or animals performed by any of the authors.

Consent for Publication

Not applicable.

Consent to participate

Not applicable.

Competing interests

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Additional information

Publisher’s Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Springer Nature or its licensor holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Hu, R., Jin, Y., Lyu, C. et al. Low-Cost Hybrid Underwater Glider Utilizes Buoyancy and Thruster Actuation: Design and Control. J Intell Robot Syst 106, 54 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10846-022-01734-w

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10846-022-01734-w

Keywords

Search

Navigation