As mentioned at the meeting earlier today, a three dimensional model space makes navigation easier. In order to illustrate that point, this model was constructed. The gray cylinder represents the submarine, and the arrows which hover around it represent various vectors describing thrust, climb, and total velocity.
The submarine attempts to travel between the purple spheres using only vertical climbing vectors, turning in the horizontal plane, and forward thrust (defined as in the direction of the viewing window, or whitish part of the cylinder). As can be seen in the video, the model is able to successfully navigate between the three chosen locations, although slowly.
A key component to the success of the navigation simulation was the inclusion of drag and its effect on velocity, without which the sub continues to drift past its objective and crash into the wall. A more complicated version of the thrust control and climb control algorithms can be constructed so that the trip can be completed in shorter time, but would require some predictive deceleration. I have an idea about how to do this, and will attempt to include it in the next version.
No comments:
Post a Comment