A Constrained Thrust Allocation Algorithm for Remotely Operated Vehicles

In this paper, the constrained thrust allocation problem is studied and solved for the class of over-actuated Remotely Operated Vehicles. In detail, we find the solution of the thrust allocation when the thrusters are affected by possible faults and, simultaneously, taking into account the thrusters’ saturation limits. The proposed thrust allocation algorithm is tested both numerically, with randomly generated input samples, and applied in simulation for the trajectory tracking of a Remotely Operated Vehicle, with real parameters and in combination with different control laws. The algorithm is compared with two commonly used approaches, that are the saturated pseudo-inverse method and the Matlab Quadratic Programming solver; both accuracy and computation time are considered in the analysis of the performances. The simulations show that the proposed algorithm performs better, in terms of computation time, w.r.t. the Matlab Quadratic Programming solver, while still retaining the optimality of the solution despite the saturation constraints; moreover, there is also an improvement in the tracking error regardless of the adopted control law