Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Altitude Control of an Unmanned Air-Water Hybrid Vehicle in the Media Transition

  • Regular paper
  • Published:
Journal of Intelligent & Robotic Systems Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

This work deals with the closed-loop altitude control of a hybrid unmanned aerial-underwater vehicle (HUAUV) during media transition. Researches about HUAUVs are important for hard-to-reach operations. There are already several studies developed for unmanned vehicles, either in air or underwater. However, research on HUAUVs is a recent topic. There is a significant complexity in adapting of vehicles to navigate in both environments, and design a controller for hybrid vehicles is not a trivial task, mainly due to the transition region. This paper presents the analysis of the altitude control of a hybrid vehicle in the media transition region between the air and water. The main objective is the development of an altitude controller suitable for the challenge of media transition and able to deal with the abrupt changing characteristics ineherent to this region. Moreover, physical limitations are also estimated for the rotational speed of the motors to improve the mathematical model of HUAUV, and a smooth reference trajectory is generated for better environment transitions. A classical proportional-integral-derivative (PID) controller and a nonlinear controller are proposed for the altitude control. Finally, simulation results present the main characteristics of the altitude controllers on media transition, corroborating its feasibility for control of this complex system.

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

References

  1. Valavanis, K.P., Vachtsevanos, G.J.: Handbook of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles. Springer Publishing Company, Incorporated, Dordrecht (2014)

    MATH  Google Scholar 

  2. Valavanis, K.P.: Advances in Unmanned Aerial Vehicles: State of the Art and the Road to Autonomy. Springer, New York (2007)

    Book  MATH  Google Scholar 

  3. Leonard, J.J., Bahr, A.: Autonomous Underwater Vehicle Navigation, pp 341–358. Springer Handbook of Ocean Engineering, Cham (2016)

    Google Scholar 

  4. da Rosa, R.T.S., Evald, P.J.D.O., Drews, P.L.J. Jr, Neto, A.A., Horn, A.C., Azzolin, R.Z., Botelho, S.S.C.: A comparative study on sigma-point kalman filters for trajectory estimation of hybrid aerial-aquatic vehicles. In: International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), pp. 7460–7465 (2018)

  5. Horn, A.C., Pinheiro, P.M., Grando, R.B., da Silva, C.B., Neto, A.A., Drews-Jr, P.L.: A novel concept for hybrid unmanned aerial underwater vehicles focused on aquatic performance. In: IEEE Latin American Robotics Symposium (LARS) and Brazilian Symposium of Robotics (SBR). IEEE, pp. 1–6 (2020)

  6. Tan, Y.H., Chen, B.M.: Survey on the development of aerial–aquatic hybrid vehicles. Unmanned Systems 9(03), 263–282 (2021)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  7. Drews, P.L., Neto, A.A., Campos, M.F.: Hybrid unmanned aerial underwater vehicle: Modeling and simulation. In: 2014 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, IEEE, pp. 4637–4642 (2014)

  8. Gurdan, D., Stumpf, J., Achtelik, M., Doth, K.-M., Hirzinger, G., Rus, D.: Energy-efficient autonomous four-rotor flying robot controlled at 1 khz. In: International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), IEEE, pp. 361–366 (2007)

  9. Michael, N., Mellinger, D., Lindsey, Q., Kumar, V.: The grasp multiple micro-uav testbed. IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine 17(3), 56–65 (2010)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  10. Aoki, V.M., Pinheiro, P.M., Drews, P.L.J. Jr, Cunha, M.A.B., Tuchtenhagen, L.G.: Analysis of a hybrid unmanned aerial underwater vehicle considering the environment transition. In: 2021 Latin American Robotics Symposium (LARS), 2021 Brazilian Symposium on Robotics (SBR), and 2021 Workshop on Robotics in Education (WRE), pp. 90–95 (2021)

  11. Grando, R.B., de Jesus, J.C., Kich, V.A., Kolling, A.H., Bortoluzzi, N.P., Pinheiro, P.M., Neto, A.A., Drews-Jr, P.L.J.: Deep reinforcement learning for mapless navigation of a hybrid aerial underwater vehicle with medium transition. In: International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) (2021)

  12. Pinheiro, P.M., Neto, A.A., Grando, R.B., Silva, C. B. d., Aoki, V.M., Cardoso, D.S., Horn, A.C., Drews, P.L.: Trajectory planning for hybrid unmanned aerial underwater vehicles with smooth media transition. Journal of Intelligent & Robotic Systems 104(3), 1–16 (2022)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  13. Patel, K., Barve, J.: Modeling, simulation and control study for the quad-copter uav. In: 2014 9th International Conference on Industrial and Information Systems (ICIIS), pp. 1–6 (2014)

  14. Mustapa, Z., Saat, S., Husin, S., Abas, N.: Altitude controller design for multi-copter uav. In: 2014 International Conference on Computer, Communications, and Control Technology (I4CT). IEEE, pp. 382–387 (2014)

  15. Xuan-Mung, N., Hong, S.-K.: Improved altitude control algorithm for quadcopter unmanned aerial vehicles. Appl. Sci. 9(10), 2122 (2019)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  16. Santos, M., Pereira, V., Ribeiro, A., Silva, M., do Carmo, M., Vidal, V., Honório, L., Cerqueira, A., Oliveira, E.: Simulation and comparison between a linear and nonlinear technique applied to altitude control in quadcopters. In: 18th International Carpathian Control Conference (ICCC), IEEE, pp. 234–239 (2017)

  17. Maia, M.M., Soni, P., Diez-garias, F.J.: Demonstration of an aerial and submersible vehicle capable of flight and underwater navigation with seamless air-water transition. arXiv:1507.01932 (2015)

  18. Maia, M.M., Mercado, D.A., Diez, F.J.: Design and implementation of multirotor aerial-underwater vehicles with experimental results. In: International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), pp. 961–966 (2017)

  19. SubUAS: The Naviator. [Online]. Available: https://thenaviator.com/, last accessed on 04/28/2022 (2019)

  20. Zha, J., Thacher, E., Kroeger, J., Mäkiharju, S.A., Mueller, M.W.: Towards breaching a still water surface with a miniature unmanned aerial underwater vehicle. In: International Conference on Unmanned Aircraft Systems (ICUAS), pp. 1178–1185 (2019)

  21. Ma, Z., Feng, J., Yang, J.: Research on vertical air–water trans-media control of hybrid unmanned aerial underwater vehicles based on adaptive sliding mode dynamical surface control. Int. J. Adv. Robot. Syst. 15(2), 1–10 (2018)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  22. Chen, G., Liu, A., Hu, J., Feng, J., Ma, Z.: Attitude and altitude control of unmanned aerial-underwater vehicle based on incremental nonlinear dynamic inversion. IEEE Access 8, 156129–156138 (2020)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  23. Horn, A.C., Pinheiro, P.M., Silva, C.B., Neto, A.A., Drews, P.L.J. Jr: A study on configuration of propellers for multirotor-like hybrid aerial-aquatic vehicles. In: ICAR, pp 173–178 (2019)

  24. Lourenço, J.: Sintonia de controladores PID (in Portuguese). [Online]. Available: http://ltodi.est.ips.pt/smarques/CS/Pid.pdf (1997)

  25. Dorf, R., Bishop, R.: Modern control systems pearson prentice hall (2008)

  26. Craig, J.: Introduction to robotics: mechanics and control pearson prentice hall (2005)

Download references

Acknowledgements

This study was funded by the Human Resource Program of The Brazilian National Agency for Petroleum, Natural Gas, and Biofuels – PRH-ANP, supported with resources from oil companies considering the contract clause no 50/2015 of R, D&I of the ANP. The authors also thank National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq) and the Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (CAPES)

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Research Group in Automation and Control - Electrical Engineering Campus Pelotas, Sul-rio-grandense Federal Institute, Praça Vinte de Setembro, 455, Pelotas, Brazil

    Lucas Griep Tuchtenhagen & Mauro André Barbosa Cunha

  2. Intelligent Robotics and Automation Group, Federal University of Rio Grande, Carreiros, Rio Grande, Brazil

    Pedro Miranda Pinheiro, Vivian Misaki Aoki, Paulo Jefferson Dias de Oliveira Evald & Paulo Lilles Jorge Drews-Jr

  3. Intelligent Systems and Control Group, Federal University of Pelotas, Dona Mariana - 01, Pelotas, Brazil

    Paulo Jefferson Dias de Oliveira Evald

Authors
  1. Lucas Griep Tuchtenhagen
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Pedro Miranda Pinheiro
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Vivian Misaki Aoki
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Paulo Jefferson Dias de Oliveira Evald
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  5. Mauro André Barbosa Cunha
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  6. Paulo Lilles Jorge Drews-Jr
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Contributions

- Lucas G. Tuchtenhagen conceived the research, wrote the article, surveyed the literature, and contributed to the vehicle modelling and simulation.

- Pedro Miranda Pinheiro wrote the article, surveyed the literature, and contributed to the vehicle modelling and simulation.

- Vivian Misaki Aoki wrote the article and contributed to the vehicle modelling and simulation.

- Paulo Jefferson Dias de Oliveira Evald wrote the article and contributed to the vehicle modelling and simulation.

- Mauro A. B. Cunha conceived the research, wrote the article, and discussed the main ideas of the article.

- Paulo Lilles Jorge Drews Jr. conceived the research, wrote the article, and discussed the main ideas of the article.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Pedro Miranda Pinheiro.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

There is no conflict of interest or competing 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 (e.g. a society or other partner) 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

Tuchtenhagen, L.G., Pinheiro, P.M., Aoki, V.M. et al. Altitude Control of an Unmanned Air-Water Hybrid Vehicle in the Media Transition. J Intell Robot Syst 107, 49 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10846-022-01791-1

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10846-022-01791-1

Keywords

Search

Navigation