Visual LOS Guided Docking of Over-actuated Underwater Vehicle

This paper discusses the visual servo guided implementation of automatic docking task for an over-actuated underwater vehicle. Firstly, an overall introduction about the over-actuated vehicle is described. Secondly, the automatic docking mission is presented, in which the design of docking device is briefly introduced. And then, the LOS guidance law, motion control algorithm and thruster allocation for the over-actuated vehicle are proposed. According to the optical signal acquired by camera, the relative position and pose information between the docking device and vehicle is achieved such that the proposed visual LOS guidance can be adopted to address the docking problem. Finally, experimental tests on the Inspector 2.0 underwater vehicle verify the feasibility and effectiveness of the whole visual LOS guided docking system.