Design of motion control of dam safety inspection underwater vehicle

Plenty of dams in China are in danger while there are few effective methods for underwater dam inspections of hidden problems such as conduits, cracks and inanitions. The dam safety inspection remotely operated vehicle (DSIROV) is designed to solve these problems which can be equipped with many advanced sensors such as acoustical, optical and electrical sensors for underwater dam inspection. A least-square parameter estimation method is utilized to estimate the hydrodynamic coefficients of DSIROV, and a four degree-of-freedom (DOF) simulation system is constructed. The architecture of DSIROV's motion control system is introduced, which includes hardware and software structures. The hardware based on PC104 BUS, uses AMD ELAN520 as the controller's embedded CPU and all control modules work in VxWorks real-time operating system. Information flow of the motion system of DSIROV, automatic control of dam scanning and dead-reckoning algorithm for navigation are also discussed. The reliability of DSIROV's control system can be verified and the control system can fulfill the motion control mission because embankment checking can be demonstrated by the lake trials.