System Modeling and Simulation of an Unmanned Aerial Underwater Vehicle

Abstract

Unmanned Aerial Underwater Vehicles (UAUVs) with multiple propellers can operate in two distinct mediums, air and underwater, and the system modeling of the autonomous vehicles is a key issue to adapt to these different external environments. In this paper, only a single set of aerial rotors with switching propulsion abilities are designed as driving components, and then a compound multi-model method is investigated to achieve good performance of the cross-medium motion. Furthermore, some additional variables, such as water resistance, buoyancy and their corresponding moments are considered for the underwater case. In particular, a critical coefficient for air-to-water switching is presented to express these gradually changing additional variables in the cross-medium motion process. Finally, the sliding mode control method is used to reduce the altitude error and attitude error of the vehicles with external environmental disturbances. The proposed scheme is tested and the model is verified on the simulation platform.