Underwater Visual-Servo Alignment Control Integrating Geometric Cognition Compensation and Confidence Assessment

To meet the requirements for the automatic alignment, insertion, and inspection of guide-tube opening pins on the upper core plate in a component pool during refueling outages of nuclear power units, this paper proposes a cognition-enhanced visual-servoing framework that integrates geometric cognition-based compensation, observation-confidence modeling, and constraint-aware optimal control. The framework addresses the key challenge posed by the coexistence of long-term geometric drift and underwater observation uncertainty. Specifically, historical closed-loop data are leveraged to learn and compensate for systematic geometric errors online, substantially improving coarse-positioning accuracy. In addition, an explicit confidence model is introduced to quantitatively assess the reliability of visual measurements. Building on these components, a confidence-driven, finite-horizon, constrained model predictive control strategy is designed to achieve safe and efficient finite-step convergence while strictly respecting actuator physical constraints. Ground experiments and deep-water component-pool validations demonstrate that the proposed method reduces coarse-positioning error by approximately 75%, achieves stable sub-millimeter alignment with an ample engineering safety margin, and effectively decreases erroneous insertions and the need for manual intervention. These results confirm the engineering applicability and safety advantages of the proposed cognition-enhanced visual-servoing framework for underwater alignment tasks in nuclear component pools.