Integral sliding mode controller for precise manoeuvring of autonomous underwater vehicle in the presence of unknown environmental disturbances

Abstract

We propose an integral sliding mode controller (ISMC) to stabilse an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) which is subject to modelling errors and often suffers from unknown environmental disturbances. The ISMC is effective in compensating for the uncertainties in the hydrodynamic and hydrostatic parameters of the vehicle and rejecting the unpredictable disturbance effects due to ocean waves, tides and currents. The ISMC is comprised of an equivalent controller and a switching controller to suppress the parameter uncertainties and external disturbances, and its closed-loop system is exponentially stable. Numerical simulations were performed to validate the proposed control approach, and experimental tests using Cyclops AUV were carried out to demonstrate its practical feasibility.

Keywords:

• robust controller
• nonlinear systems
• hydrodynamic uncertainties
• hydrodynamic disturbances

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by the MSIP (Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning), Korea, under the “ICT Consilience Creative Program” (IITP-2015-R0346-15-1007) supervised by the IITP (Institute for Information & communications Technology Promotion); this research was a part of the project titled “Gyeongbuk Sea Grant Program”, funded by the Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries, Korea and partly supported by the Civil Military Technology Cooperation Center, Korea.