摘要：AbstractAutonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) gain importance in all fields of marine industry. Today, autonomous underwater vehicles offer a wide capability spectrum. But these very complex and cost-intensive robot systems are often developed for a special task or a limited depth range. They should be used to execute long time surveys or monitor underwater surrounding and geological, chemical, and biological points of interest systematically and with less intervention of the users. Hence, a lot of work has been done on the area of AUV motion control and providing the users with control applications like seabed mapping, underwater inspection algorithms, and formation control methods to meet with these demands. Against this background, the paper describes a temperature control application, which monitors and follows an unknown temperature distribution using given reference isotherms. The proposed temperature control structure has been designed as variable two-level controller with integral action, which uses the actual gradient of the depth difference between the isotherms to adapt the reference depth, instead of applying the path of the isotherm itself. In that way the temperature control system is designed for use with a depth-controlled autonomous underwater vehicle. Finally, simulations are presented to show the usability of the proposed temperature monitoring and following system using measured and artificially generated temperature distributions.
