Research on Thermocline Tracking Based on Multiple Autonomous Underwater Vehicles

Thermocline is of great significance to marine scientific research. Multi-autonomous underwater vehicles (AUV) have great advantages over single autonomous underwater vehicle in ocean observation. This paper describes a control method for multi-agent formation. Based on this method, a strategy of multi-AUV formation for thermocline tracking is proposed. This paper firstly analyzes the stability of the formation control method based on the virtual body and artificial potential method (VBAP), and verifies the feasibility of this control method on the target-tracking problem by tracking a curved surface in space. Where after, in this paper, a thermocline tracking strategy based on vertical temperature gradient is proposed. Then the simulation experiment is designed based on the above control method and temperature data. The experimental results express that the multi-AUV formation can always keep working between the upper and lower boundary of thermocline, and tracks the thermocline effectively.