A control framework for biologically inspired underwater swimming manipulators equipped with thrusters*

:In this paper we present a control framework for a novel biologically inspired underwater swimming manipulator (USM) equipped with thrusters. The framework consists of a kinematic part and a dynamic part. The kinematic part of the framework controls the velocity of the head link of the USM by coordinating the motion of the body of the USM and the articulated joints. Various methods based on inverse kinematics is presented and the applicability of each method for kinematic control of the USM is discussed. The dynamic part of the framework ensures that the velocity references generated by the inverse kinematics method are followed and that the thruster forces are appropriately distributed among the available thrusters. The significance of the relationship between the inverse kinematics routine and the thruster allocation algorithm is explained and simulations are included to validate the concept for control of the USM.