Identification Methods Applied to an Unmanned Underwater Vehicle

Abstract This paper deals with the application of identification methods to the determination of the dynamical behaviour of an UUV (Unmanned Underwater Vehicle). After a concise introduction to the longitudinal equations of the motion, which describe the heave and pitch responses to the action of the control surface deflections and of the thrusters, identification is formulated for a linearized UUV model. The related minimization problem is approached and solved by means of two different random-search methods, respectively based on simulated annealing and on genetic algorithms. The numerical features of such identification methods are discussed and some preliminary promising results are presented, which are obtained by simulation experiments.