Design of a Hardware in Loop Simulator for Vertical Motion of an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle Under Simulated Ocean Currents

Scientific Essay from the year 2014 in the subject Engineering - Naval Engineering, Ocean Engineering, grade: A, , course: Electrical and Electronics Engineering, language: English, abstract: The paper presents the design of a hardware in loop (HIL) simulator for the vertical motion of an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) operating under identical vertical thrusters. The thruster mathematical modelling along with the dynamic model of the AUV for its vertical motion is presented. The HIL simulates ocean currents of different speeds and direction at different depth ranges which displays how the AUV drifts from its initial dive position. A Graphical User Interface for the hardware in loop simulator is built on C# which provides various controls over the simulator like modifying the water currents, its initial dive location, maximum diving depth. The GUI is given a serial input (control voltage) which simulates the thruster and the two serial outputs- depth and altitude (or pressure at the depth) are used to study the behavior and motion of the AUV in the vertical direction, whereas the simulated ocean currents helps us to monitor the motion of the AUV in the horizontal direction.