Innovative Methods for Optimally Mixing a Diverse Suite of Control Effectors for Marine Vehicles

As the Navy expands its presence in shallow coastal waters, new technologies are required to address the precise and aggressive maneuvering desirable for many littoral mission scenarios. This translates directly to higher performance requirements for a ship's guidance, navigation, and control system. Current generation control systems for marine applications are characterized by independent control loops designed to use a specific effector/actuator set to achieve maneuvering in a single axis. The aggressive maneuvering required in littoral regions can violate axis- and frequency-separation assumptions inherent in the baseline controller, resulting in cross coupling, undesirable handling qualities, and, in extreme cases, instability. This proposal presents a novel control system architecture to optimally mix the diverse complement of control effectors/actuators available on marine vehicles. The challenges associated with mixing such a diverse set of effectors are addressed through a combination of model predictive control and control allocation techniques developed for aerospace applications. In this approach, commands are found that effectively blend actuators with very different bandwidths while minimizing any cross coupling effects typically seen during aggressive multi-axis maneuvering.