Estimación en línea del efecto del oleaje para el control de un vehículo marino.

Wind generated waves are a very random phenomenon and it is one of the main environmental disturbances that affect the operation of Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUV) navigating in shallow waters and coastal zones. In order to attenuate the undesirable effect of the ocean waves on the control system of AUVs, the measurements from the sensors need to be filtered out, using the estimated wave encounter frequency. Developing an estimator capable of providing the encounter frequency in real time using the Algebraic Identification method, is fully reported in this paper. In the design of the proposed algebraic estimator, a linear differential equation to represent the waves spectrum is used, which simplifies the mathematical procedure. The simulations carried out with simulated data and with real data from an experiment at sea, show the excellent results of the estimator in terms of precision in the final value and estimation time. In addition, its show the use of the wave encounter frequency estimation to adjust the filtering techniques previously implemented for the vehicle in a proper way, which results in a reduction of vibrations and energy consumption of the vehicle's rudder system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]