An innovative decentralized strategy for I-AUVs cooperative manipulation tasks

In this paper, the authors propose an innovative decentralized approach for cooperative mobile manipulation of I-AUVs. This decentralized strategy is based on a different use of potential field method; in particular, a multi-layer control structure is developed to in parallel manage the coordination of the swarm, the guidance and navigation of the I-AUVs and the manipulation task. The main advantage of the potential field method is that less information is necessary: navigation and control problems are reduced to the evaluation of the distance vector among the vehicles, object and obstacles. Moreover, because of the technological problems caused by the underwater environment, the reduction of the transmitted data is one of the keypoints of this architecture. In MATLAB®-Simulink®, the authors have simulated a transportation task of a partially known object along a reference trajectory in an unknown environment, where some obstacles are placed. The task is performed by an I-AUV swarm composed of four vehicles, each one provided of a 7 Degrees Of Freedom (DOFs) robotic arm.