Investigation of an Underwater Vectored Thruster Based on 3RPS Parallel Manipulator

Autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) are important and useful tool platforms in exploring and utilizing ocean resource. However, the effect of control surfaces would decrease even invalid complete in this condition, and it is very hard for conventional AUVs to perform detailed missions at a low forward speed. Therefore, solving this problem of AUVs becomes particularly important to increase the application scope of AUVs. In this paper, we present a design scheme for the vectored thruster AUV based on 3RPS parallel manipulator, which is a kind of parallel manipulator and has advantages of compact structure and reliable performance. To study the performance and characteristics of the proposed thrust-vectoring mechanism, a series of works about corresponding kinematic and dynamic analysis have been performed through the theoretical analysis and numerical simulation. In the part of kinematics, the inverse, forward kinematics, and workspace analysis of the thrust-vectoring mechanism is presented, and the numerical simulations are accomplished to prove the feasibility and effectiveness of this design in AUVs. In order to further verify feasibility of the thrust-vectoring mechanism, based on the considerations of various affecting factors, a dynamic model of the designed thrust-vectoring mechanism is established according to theoretical analysis, and the driving forces of the linear actuator are presented through a series of numerical simulations. In addition, a control scheme based on PID algorithm is proposed for the designed vectored thruster with considering various affecting factors and the application environment. Meanwhile, the control scheme is also established and verified in MATLAB Simscape Mutibody. A series of numerical simulations of the thrust-vectoring mechanism prove the feasibility of the vectored thruster. According to equipping the designed vectored thruster, the AUVs can overcome the limit of weakening the control ability at zero or low forward speeds, and this improvement also expands the application of it, which has been scaled greatly.