The visual servoing system "CYCLOPE" designed for dynamic stabilisation of AUV and ROV

Abstract

The paper presents the CYCLOPE control system designed and developed by Ifremer for the dynamic stabilisation of unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs), thanks to visual servoing. The CYCLOPE system has been designed because optical stabilisation is the more suitable solution for controlling both UUV motion and stability when performing small motions. The CYCLOPE system is a complete hardware and software system designed to be installed on-board an AUV or to be connected to an ROV surface control station, in order to perform autonomous station-keeping task. The CYCLOPE system software is based on the OPTIC/spl I.bar/DP Software/sup /spl reg// developed by Ifremer; it is used to perform the video image processing and the control computation. Prior to control computation, CYCLOPE fuses the calculated and measured visual information with the navigation data provided by the various sensors fitting the underwater vehicle.