Spatial curvilinear path following control of underactuated AUV with multiple uncertainties

This paper investigates the problem of spatial curvilinear path following control of underactuated autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) with multiple uncertainties. Firstly, in order to design the appropriate controller, path following error dynamics model is constructed in a moving Serret-Frenet frame, and the five degrees of freedom (DOFs) dynamic model with multiple uncertainties is established. Secondly, the proposed control law is separated into kinematic controller and dynamic controller via back-stepping technique. In the case of kinematic controller, to overcome the drawback of dependence on the accurate vehicle model that are present in a number of path following control strategies described in the literature, the unknown side-slip angular velocity and attack angular velocity are treated as uncertainties. Whereas in the case of dynamic controller, the model parameters perturbations, unknown external environmental disturbances and the nonlinear hydrodynamic damping terms are treated as lumped uncertainties. Both kinematic and dynamic uncertainties are estimated and compensated by designed reduced-order linear extended state observes (LESOs). Thirdly, feedback linearization (FL) based control law is implemented for the control model using the estimates generated by reduced-order LESOs. For handling the problem of computational complexity inherent in the conventional back-stepping method, nonlinear tracking differentiators (NTDs) are applied to construct derivatives of the virtual control commands. Finally, the closed loop stability for the overall system is established. Simulation and comparative analysis demonstrate that the proposed controller exhibits enhanced performance in the presence of internal parameter variations, external unknown disturbances, unmodeled nonlinear damping terms, and measurement noises.