Thruster modeling for a Hovering Autonomous Underwater Vehicle considering thruster-thruster and thruster-hull interaction

This paper presents the thruster modeling for a Hovering Autonomous Underwater Vehicle developed by Underwater, Control, and Robotics Group. Bollard-pull experiments are done to find the relationship between axial forces generated by thrusters and input signal given to Arduino Uno board in degree, taking into account the effect of thruster-thruster and thruster-hull interaction. Experiments results show that a thruster will lose efficiency due to the interaction with the vehicle's body. Besides, experiment results also show that the effect of thruster-thruster interaction is not obvious for far separating thrusters.