Predictive Control Strategy for AUV Docking with a Mobile Station and Co-Visibility Constraints

This paper address the problem of docking an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) with a mobile docking station using Nonlinear Model Predictive Control (NMPC) strategy. The optimal control goal is to track the predicted motion of the docking station over the prediction horizon, instead of using only its current states. Further, co-visibility constraints are proposed to ensure that the docking station remains in the Field Of View (FOV) of the AUV and vice-versa. These constraints would allow the AUV and the Docking Station (DS) to use a vision-based localization in the terminal phases of docking operation. The performance of the proposed predictive strategy is illustrated through simulation.