Design of Thrusters Configuration and Thrust Allocation Control for a Remotely Operated Vehicle

The paper addresses design of thruster configuration and thrust allocation control for an underactuated remotely operated underwater vehicle (ROV). With the opposing axial velocity generated by the propeller and the thruster-to-ROV surface interaction, good thruster configuration on the ROV platform is required. The paper concentrates on finding a thruster configuration on the ROV using one-norm algorithm and comparing it with modified singular values method. The thrust allocation control that determine the voltage input to each thruster has shown to achieve a lower voltage input to thrusters and better thrusters' utilization as compared to the one without the thrust allocation. Illustrative simulations are provided to demonstrate the effectiveness and correctness of the proposed methods on the ROV.