Analysis and Experimental Validation of a Low-Complexity Enhanced Orientation-Based Controller for Tethered Energy-Harvesting Systems

In this work, a methodology for controlling the flight of an underwater energy-harvesting kite, termed enhanced orientation-based control, is presented. This control technique is shown to perform comparably to more complex, hierarchical path-following control approaches that rely upon expensive and unreliable localization sensors while performing significantly better than simple orientation-based controllers that possess a comparable degree of complexity. The periodic closed-loop stability of a kite utilizing the proposed controller is validated in a low-order simulation framework. From there, the performance of the proposed controller is benchmarked against established control techniques via a medium-fidelity simulation environment. Finally, the efficacy of the proposed controller design is demonstrated experimentally based on two testing results on a scaled prototype kite.