Planning and Control of Marine Floats in the Presence of Dynamic, Uncertain Currents

Book One

Volume

Proceedings of the International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling, 26

Novel Applications Track

We address the control of a vertically profiling float using ocean-model-based predictions of future currents. While these problems are in reality continuous control problems, we solve them by searching a discrete space of future actions. Additionally, while the environment is a continuous space, the ocean model we use is a discrete cell-based model. We show that even with an imperfect model of ocean currents, planning in the ocean current model can significantly improve results for a specific problem of controlling a vertically profiling float when a trade-off between remaining at the same location as a virtual mooring and collecting more data with more profiles is available. We also present anecdotal data from an April 2015 deployment of EM-APEX floats.

10.1609/icaps.v26i1.13776