A Visual Control Scheme for AUV Underwater Pipeline Tracking

Inspection of submarine cables and pipelines is nowadays more and more carried out by Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) because of their low operative costs, much less than those pertaining to the traditional SHIP/ROV-based (Remotely Operated Vehicles) industrial practice, and for the improvements in their effectiveness due to technological and methodological progress in the field. In this paper, we discuss the design of a visual control scheme aimed at solving a pipeline tracking control problem. The presented scheme consists of autonomously generating a reference path of an underwater pipeline deployed on the seabed from the images taken by a camera mounted on the AUV in order to allow the vehicle to move parallel to the longitudinal axis of the pipeline so as to inspect its status. The robustness of the scheme is also shown by adding external disturbances to the closed-loop control systems. We present a comparative simulation study under Robot Operating System (ROS) to find out suitable solutions for the underwater pipeline tracking problem.