Cooperative Motion Control Using Hybrid Acoustic-Optical Communication Networks

Abstract

There is currently widespread interest in the development of groups of autonomous underwater vehicles for ocean exploration. This calls for the deployment of robots that can act in cooperation by exchanging data over communication networks. For this purpose, acoustic networks have been so far the choice par excellence. However, for operations involving vehicles operating at close range, there is currently a flurry of activity on the use of optical-based communication systems, capable of higher transmission rates. As a result, the goal of this work is to make optical communications viable and to use both communication technologies during underwater cooperative missions. Motivated by this goal, the first part of this work is dedicated to design a coordination controller with an event-based communication strategy for the coordination of the vehicles over the acoustic network. The second part of this work proposes an algorithm to make optical communications viable, which ultimately boils down to achieving optical beam alignment between a pair of cooperative agents. The proposed algorithm is illustrated by simulation results that show optical beam alignment being reached for a pair of vehicles in a cooperative formation.