A Cascade Approach for Global Trajectory Tracking Control of Underactuated AUVs

A global trajectory tracking controller is presented for underactuated AUVs with only surge force and yaw moment in the horizontal plane. A transformation is introduced to represent the tracking error system into a cascade form. The global and uniform asymptotic stabilization problem of the resulting cascade system is reduced to the stabilization problem of two subsystems by use of the cascade approach. For the stabilization of the subsystem involving the yaw moment, a control law is proposed based on the feedback linearization method. Another subsystem is stabilized by designing a fuzzy sliding mode controller which can offer a systematical means of constructing a set of shrinking-span and dilating-span membership functions. In order to demonstrate the practicability of the proposed controller, control constraints, parameter uncertainties, and external disturbances are considered according to practical situation of AUVs. Simulation results show very good tracking performance and robustness of the proposed control schemes.

SYNCHRONIZED PATH FOLLOWING CONTROL OF MULTIPLE HOMOGENOUS UNDERACTUATED AUVS

This paper addresses the problem of synchronized path following of multiple homogenous underaetuated autonomous underwater vehicles （AUVs）. The dedicated control laws are categorized into two envelopes： One is steering individual underwater vehicle to track along predefined path, and the other is ensuring tracked paths of multiple vehicles to be synchronized, by means of decentralized speed adaption under the constraints of multi-vehicle communication topology. With these two tasks formulation, geometric path following is built on Lyapunov theory and baekstepping techniques, while injecting helmsman behavior into classic individual path following control. Synchronization of path parameters are reached by using a mixture of tools from linear algebra, graph theory and nonlinear control theory. A simple but effective control design on direct inter-vehicle speed adaption with minimized communication variables, enables the multi-AUV systems to be synchronized and stabilized into an invariant manifold, and all speeds converge to desired assignments as a byproduct. Simulation results illustrate the performance of the synchronized path following control laws proposed.

Intelligent PID guidance control for AUV path tracking

Based on rational behavior model of three layers, a tracking control system is designed for straight line tracking which is commonly used in underwater survey missions. An intelligent PID control law implemented as planning level during the control system using transverse deviation is came up with. Continuous tracking of path expressed by a point sequence can be realized by the law. Firstly, a path tracking control system based on rational behavior model of three layers is designed, mainly satisfying the needs of underactuated AUV. Since there is no need to perform spatially coupled maneuvers, the 3D path tracking control is decoupled into planar 2D path tracking and depth or height tracking separately. Secondly, planar path tracking controller is introduced. For the reason that more attention is paid to comparing with vertical position control, transverse deviation in analytical form is derived. According to the Lyapunov direct theory, control law is designed using discrete PID algorithm whose parameters obey adaptive fuzzy adjustment. Reference heading angle is given as an output of the guidance controller conducted by lateral deviation together with its derivative. For the purpose of improving control quality and facilitating parameter modifying, data normalize modules based on Sigmoid function are applied to input-output data manipulation. Lastly, a sequence of experiments was carried out successfully, including tests in Longfeng lake and at the Yellow sea. In most challenging sea conditions, tracking errors of straight line are below 2 m in general. The results show that AUV is able to compensate the disturbance brought by sea current. The provided test results demonstrate that the designed guidance controller guarantees stably and accurately straight route tracking. Besides, the proposed control system is accessible for continuous comb-shaped path tracking in region searching.

Three-Dimensional Trajectory Tracking Control of Underactuated Autonomous Underwater Vehicles with Input Saturation

This paper addresses a three-dimensional(3D)trajectory tracking problem of underactuated autonomous underwater vehicles(AUVs)subjected to input saturation and external disturbances.The proposed controller can achieve practical convergence of tracking errors for general reference trajectories,including persistently exciting(PE)time varying trajectories and fixed points.At first,a modified error state formulation is introduced to tackle the situation that desired velocities do not satisfy PE condition.Then,on the basis of the backstepping technique and a Nussbaum-type even function,a saturated controller is designed so that the tracking errors can converge to a bounded neighborhood of the origin.The stability analysis based on Lyapunov theory shows that the tracking errors are globally ultimately uniformly bounded.Finally,some simulation results illustrate the effectiveness and robustness of the proposed control strategy.