Operating an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) in close proximity to terrain typically relies solely on the vehicle sensors for terrain detection, and challenges the manoeuvrability of energy efficient flight‐style AUVs. This paper gives new results on altitude tracking limits of such vehicles by using the fully understood environment of a lake to perform repeated experiments while varying the altitude demand, obstacle detection and actuator use of a hover‐capable flight‐style AUV. The results are analysed for mission success, vehicle risk and repeatability, demonstrating the terrain following capabilities of the overactuated AUV over a range of altitude tracking strategies and how these measures better inform vehicle operators. A major conclusion is that the effects of range limits, bias and false detections of the sensors used for altitude tracking must be fully accounted for to enable mission success. Furthermore it was found that switching between hover‐ and flight‐style actuations based on speed, whilst varying the operation speed, has advantages for performance improvement over combining hover‐ and flight‐style actuators at high speeds.

中文翻译：

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具有悬停功能的飞行式自主水下航行器低空地形跟踪的实验分析

在靠近地形的地方操作自动水下航行器（AUV）通常仅依赖于车辆传感器来进行地形检测，并挑战了高效节能的飞行式AUV的可操作性。本文通过充分了解湖泊的环境进行重复实验，同时改变了海拔要求，障碍物检测和使用具有悬停功能的飞行式AUV的执行器，从而给出了有关此类车辆的高度跟踪极限的新结果。分析结果的任务成功率，车辆风险和可重复性，展示了在一系列高度跟踪策略中过度驱动的AUV在地形上的跟随能力，以及这些措施如何更好地为车辆操作人员提供信息。一个主要结论是范围限制的影响，必须充分考虑用于高度跟踪的传感器的偏差和错误检测，以确保任务成功。此外，还发现，基于速度在悬停和飞行式执行器之间进行切换，同时改变操作速度，与在高速下组合悬停和飞行式执行器相比，具有改善性能的优势。