Robust adaptive control of underwater vehicles: A comparative study

Robust adaptive control of underwater vehicles in 6 DOF is analysed in the context of measurement noise. The performance of the adaptive control laws of Sadegh and Harowitz (1990) and Slotine and Benedetto (1990) are compared. Both these schemes require that all states are measured, that is the velocities and positions in surge, sway, heave, roll, pitch and yaw. However, for underwater vehicles it is difficult to measure the linear velocities whereas angular velocity measurements can be obtained by using a 3 axes angular rate sensor. This problem is addressed by designing a nonlinear observer for linear velocity state estimation. The proposed observer requires that the position and the attitude are measured, e.g. by using a hydroacoustic positioning system for linear positions, two gyros for roll and pitch and a compass for yaw. In addition angular rate measurements will be assumed available from a 3-axes rate sensor or a state estimator. It is also assumed that the measurement rate is limited to 2 Hz for all the sensors. Simulation studies with a 3 DOF AUV model are used to demonstrate the convergence and robustness of the adaptive control laws and the velocity state observer