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Innovative Methods for Optimally Mixing a Diverse Suite of Control Effectors for Marine Vehicles

Award Information
Agency: Department of Defense
Branch: Navy
Contract: N00024-06-C-4103
Agency Tracking Number: N041-033-1358
Amount: $598,598.00
Phase: Phase II
Program: SBIR
Solicitation Topic Code: N04-033
Solicitation Number: 2004.1
Timeline
Solicitation Year: 2004
Award Year: 2005
Award Start Date (Proposal Award Date): 2005-11-02
Award End Date (Contract End Date): 2007-11-01
Small Business Information
1410 Sachem Place Suite 202
Charlottesville, VA 22901
United States
DUNS: 120839477
HUBZone Owned: No
Woman Owned: No
Socially and Economically Disadvantaged: No
Principal Investigator
 Alec J.D. Bateman
 Research Scientist
 (434) 973-1215
 bateman@barron-associates.com
Business Contact
 David Ward
Title: President
Phone: (434) 973-1215
Email: barron@barron-associates.com
Research Institution
N/A
Abstract

The control of modern underwater vehicles presents a number of challenges, including significant nonlinearities in the vehicle dynamics and a potentially large suite of control effectors with widely differing properties. Current generation control architectures for submarines are often characterized by independent control loops for each actuator or for different vehicle axes, which are not able to explicitly address interactions among loops, particularly nonlinear interactions, or to combine the full suite of control effectors to produce a desired vehicle response. In Phase I, the team began developing inner-loop control approaches that address these deficiencies, and demonstrated these methods through their application to a fast-attack submarine model. The approaches combine model predictive control with a quadratic or piecewise linear programming based control allocator that explicitly accounts for actuator saturation nonlinearities. The Phase II effort will focus on refining the design methodology so that it can be used to rapidly implement a control law for any specific vehicle of interest. The proposed Phase II research effort will also add path planning and state estimation capabilities to provide a complete guidance and control system for submersibles. The broad applicability of the design methodology will be validated through its application to multiple diverse vehicle models.

* Information listed above is at the time of submission. *

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