EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF A POLLUTANT TRACKING UNMANNED SURFACE VESSEL

An unmanned surface vehicle (USV) named Springer has specifically been designed for the purpose of monitoring water pollutants and to track them to their sources. This paper presents the first set of experimental results of the USV which have recently been carried out at Roadford Reservoir, Devon, UK. An online genetic algorithm based model predictive controller (GA-MPC) has been utilised. The experiments were initially conducted using an umbilical attached to the vehicle as a means of transmitting controller demands to the motors. This was later removed and full autonomous tests were carried out and a comparison is made. A waypoint guidance strategy was also integrated with the GA- MPC autopilot and the vehicle was launched in a fully autonomous mode. The results shown demonstrate the capability of the autopilot to generate control demands in order to cope with external disturbances and modelling uncertainty.