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

Abstract

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.