Underwater Navigation Behaviors Using Wide-Field Integration Methods

Potential flow theory is used to derive velocity magnitude information for a) inclined flow past a stationary cylinder, b) moving cylinder inside a tunnel and c) moving cylinder inside a circular arena. Wide-Field Integration methods which are bioinspired techniques are used to extract relative states from the velocity magnitude signals for the above three situations. A linear controller using these relative states has been simulated to produce rheotaxis, wide-field obstacle avoidance, centering and wall following behavior. The approach is extended to a viscous inclined flow over an airfoil using an off-the-shelf CFD package where rheotaxis is again demonstrated using the same controller.