Active Control of Marine Vehicles in the Presence of Strong, Dynamic, Uncertain Currents

We address the control of a vertically profiling float us- ing 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 trading off remaining at the same location as a virtual mooring and collecting more data with more profiles.