Adaptive Variable Threshold Event-Triggered Control for Trajectory Tracking of Autonomous Underwater Vehicles with Actuator Saturation

This paper presents the design of two predefined-time active fault-tolerant controllers for the trajectory tracking of autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) which can address actuator faults without causing actuator saturation. The first controller offers improved steady-state trajectory tracking precision, while the second ensures a nonsingular property. Firstly, a predefined-time sliding mode controller is formulated based on a predefined-time disturbance observer by integrating a novel predefined-time auxiliary system to prevent the control input from exceeding the actuator’s physical limitations. Subsequently, a non-singular backstepping controller is introduced to circumvent potential singularities in the sliding mode controller, guaranteeing that the trajectory tracking error is uniformly ultimately bounded (UUB) within the predefined time. Additionally, theoretical analysis and simulation results are presented to illustrate the advantages of the proposed method.

Three-dimensional visual simulation is very helpful during the research and development of autonomous underwater vehicle. In this article, a three-dimensional visual simulation system for autonomous underwater vehicle is designed based on an underwater simulator called UWSim. Firstly, underwater scene and the vehicle model is configured, and the dynamic model is built based on the autonomous underwater vehicle. A power reaching law based sliding mode controller is then designed for verification. Finally, a co-simulation platform based on UWSim and Matlab/Simulink is implemented. On this co-simulation platform, a trajectory tracking simulation based on the proposed control strategy is carried out. The simulation results indicate that this three-dimensional visual simulation platform is a helpful method to display and update the visualization scene of autonomous underwater vehicle and verify specific control algorithms.

The paper studies the trajectory tracking control problem of autonomous underwater vehicles (AUV) with practical constraints via economic model predictive control (EMPC) strategy. The cost function in EMPC is designed with two parts. One part is the trajectory tracking cost and the other part is the economic cost which is utilized to keep the AUV tracking within one side of the trajectory. We term this type of trajectory tracking as the unilateral trajectory tracking, which can be applied for hazardous area tracking and obstacle avoidance of AUVs. The effectiveness of the proposed approach is verified via thorough simulation studies.

In recent years, precious observations by autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) have been performed. Tracking and navigation of AUV are important for precious observations. In Japan agency for Marine-earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC) the observations with AUV ldquoURASHIMArdquo have been implemented in deep ocean area. AUV URASHIMA is navigated by an inertial navigation system (INS) mainly. The absolute position of AUV is tracked on the support vessel with super short base-line (SSBL) method of acoustic positioning. And sometime the own position in AUV is updated by the SSBL estimation result to correct the drift error of INS. However the SSBL is not so accurate. So the position correction includes the SSBL error and the position correction is performed drastically. In this paper, a method for accurate tracking of AUV and rapid correction of the INS status is proposed. The tracking is mainly achieved by SSBL on the support vessel. Additionally the INS data is transmitted from AUV including the acoustic positioning signal. The INS output of relative position to past own position is very accurate within short time. The INS data is used for tracking. Furthermore the position result estimated on the vessel is transmitted to AUV with next interrogation signal. And the own position in AUV is rapidly updated with accurate estimation. Some digital data including INS data is modulated with phase shift keying (PSK) method and direct sequence spread spectrum (DSSS) technique for transmission with acoustic positioning signal. The proposed method was considered by simulation. And good results were obtained.

In this paper, an adaptive neural network (NN) trajectory tracking control scheme is developed for underactuated autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) subject to unknown dynamic parameters and unknown disturbances. A novel additional control based on Nussbaum function is proposed to handle the underactuation problem of AUVs. The radial basis function NNs with minimal learning parameter (MLP) are employed to online approximate the compounded uncertain item due to unknown dynamic parameters and unknown disturbances. On the basics of the above, an adaptive NN trajectory tracking control law is proposed using command filtered vector-backstepping design tool. As a result, the computational burden of the developed trajectory tracking control scheme is significantly reduced, Theoretical analysis indicates that the proposed control law can force the AUV track the desired trajectory and guarantee that all signals in the trajectory tracking closed-loop control system are bounded. Simulation results on an AUV verify the effectiveness of our developed control scheme.

Trajectory tracking of autonomous underwater vehicle under disturbance based on time-delay adaptive high-order sliding mode control

Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) are widely used for the inspection of seabed pipelines. To address the issues of low trajectory tracking accuracy in AUV inspection processes due to uncertain ocean current disturbances, this paper designs a new dual-loop controller based on Model Predictive Control (MPC) and Variable Universe S-plane algorithms (S-VUD FLC, where VUD represents Variable Universe Discourse and FLC represents Fuzzy Logic Control) to achieve three-dimensional (3-D) trajectory tracking of an over-actuated AUV under uncertain ocean current disturbances. This paper uses MPC as the outer-loop position controller and S-VUD FLC as the inner-loop speed controller. The outer-loop controller generates desired speed instructions that are passed to the inner-loop speed controller, while the inner-loop speed controller generates control input and uses a direct logic thrust distribution method that approaches optimal energy consumption to distribute the thrust generated by the propellers to the over-actuated AUV, achieving closed-loop tracking of the entire trajectory. When designing the outer-loop MPC controller, the actual control input constraints of the system are considered, and control increments are introduced to reduce control model errors and the impact of uncertain external disturbances on the actual AUV model parameters. When designing the inner-loop S-VUD FLC, the strong robustness of the variable universe fuzzy controller and the easy construction characteristics of the S-plane algorithm are combined, and integral action is introduced to improve the system’s tracking accuracy. The stability of the outer loop controller is proven by the Lyapunov method, and the stability of the inner loop controller is verified by simulation. Finally, simulations show that the over-actuated AUV has fast tracking processes and high tracking result accuracy under uncertain ocean current disturbances, demonstrating the effectiveness of the designed dual-loop controller.

Adaptive fixed-time backstepping control for three-dimensional trajectory tracking of underactuated autonomous underwater vehicles

Achieving precise trajectory tracking with practical applicability for underactuated autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) is challenging due to uncertainties and inherent underactuation. This paper presents a finite-time control framework with continuous inputs to address this issue. By incorporating a sliding mode observer, the framework estimates lumped disturbances – including mismatched lateral velocity disturbances – to facilitate effective control law design. A key feature is the direct dependence of the control input on the sliding manifold, which avoids chattering and yields a continuous dynamical control law. Furthermore, the controller utilises an integral form to obtain the equivalent sign-function of sliding variables, eliminating the need for saturation function approximations. This design guarantees finite-time convergence and reduces the reliance on high-order state derivatives. Simulation on the REMUS AUV verifies that the proposed controller achieves favorable performance in the convergence of both position and velocity tracking errors. These results robustly validate the practical value of the proposed controller for real-world AUV applications.

An augmented state Gaussian mixture probability hypothesis density filter for multitarget tracking of autonomous underwater vehicles

In this chapter, the receding horizon Kalman filter is applied to underwater navigation systems. The ocean covers about two-thirds of the earth and has a great effect on human beings. However, the ocean is overlooked while we focus our attention on land and atmospheric issues; we have not been able to explore the full depths of the ocean, its abundant livings and non-living resources. For example, only recently we have discovered, by using manned submersibles, that a large amount of methane and carbon dioxide comes from the seafloor and extraordinary groups of organisms live in hydrothermal vent areas. However, a number of complex issues due to the unstructured and hazardous undersea environment make it difficult to survey in the ocean even though today’s technologies have allowed humans to land on the moon and robots to travel to Mars. Unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs) can help us better understand marine and other environmental issues, protect the ocean resources of the earth from pollution, and efficiently utilize them for human welfare. The UUV is a platform for a variety of sensors: acoustic, magnetic, gravimetric and chemical ones. Most commercial UUVs are tethered and remotely operated, referred to as remotely operated vehicles (ROVs). Extensive use of manned submersibles and ROVs are currently limited to a few applications because of very high operational costs, operator fatigue and safety issues. The demand for advanced underwater vehicle technologies is growing and will eventually lead to fully autonomous and reliable underwater vehicles. Autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) were initially developed to perform missions that were not easy for ROVs and manned underwater vehicles. Since the autonomy allows AUVs to be used for risky missions such as a mine countermeasure (MCM) or under-ice operations, AUVs are replacing ROVs towed vehicles as well as manned underwater vehicles (Whitcomb, 2000). For detailed ocean surveys, an AUV acts as a more stable platform for precision sensors than ROVs or towed vehicles because an AUV is not subject to physical disturbances transmitted along the cable to the surface vessel. This absence of physical attachment also allows AUVs to measure ocean characteristics at specific depths and perform bottom-following missions as owing to its autonomy. In short, An AUV provides marine researchers with a new form of access to deeper ocean. For an AUV to successfully complete a typical survey mission, it must follow a path specified by the operator as closely as possible and arrive at a precise location for collecting data. When an AUV is not able to follow the path accurately during the mission, critical Source: Kalman Filter, Book edited by: Vedran Kordic, ISBN 978-953-307-094-0, pp. 390, May 2010, INTECH, Croatia, downloaded from SCIYO.COM

When an autonomous underwater vehicle is performing missions in the ocean it is often subject to external disturbances as the sea currents, changes in the salinity, etc. These phenomena could degrade the performance of the controller of the submarine which can be translated by increasing of the tracking error or causing instability. Taking into account these issues, in this paper we design an adaptive controller based on a high-order sliding mode control for an autonomous underwater vehicle focused on the paradigm of the trajectory tracking problem. First, we rewrite the classical representation of the underwater vehicle in terms of the known dynamics, and then it is transformed to a control affine structure. After, we design an adaptive high-order sliding mode controller for the trajectory tracking problem. Also, we prove the stability of the resulting closed-loop system using Lyapunov arguments. Finally, real-time experiments are performed to validate the proposed methodology as well as its robustness.

In this article, a practical fixed-time adaptive neural network (NN) trajectory tracking control scheme for underactuated autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) subject to uncertain dynamics, unknown time-varying disturbances, an unknown dead zone, actuator faults and input quantization is developed for the first time. Here, a hysteresis quantizer is introduced to decrease the oscillation in the signal quantization process. Then, the radial basis function NN is employed to compensate the uncertainty term in the AUVs trajectory tracking control system. By incorporating the bounded estimate, smoothing functions and parameter adaptive technique, the problem of unknown dead zone, actuator fault and input quantization are addressed. The restrictive conditions of boundedness for the disturbance-like item in conventional sector bounded quantizer is resolved. Subsequently, a practical fixed-time adaptive NN trajectory tracking control law is designed does not require any parameter information of the quantizer under the backstepping design framework. The theoretical analysis further confirms that all signals in the AUV trajectory tracking closed-loop control system remain bounded, and the developed control scheme is shown to be effective through simulation results.

This article investigates the three-dimensional trajectory tracking control problem for an underactuated autonomous underwater vehicle in the presence of parameter perturbations and external disturbances. An adaptive robust controller is proposed based on the velocity control strategy and adaptive integral sliding mode control algorithm. First, the desired velocities are developed using coordinate transformation and the backstepping method, which is the necessary velocities for autonomous underwater vehicle to track the time-varying desired trajectory. The bioinspired neurodynamics is used to smooth the desired velocities, which effectively avoids the jump problem of the velocity and simplifies the derivative calculation. Then, the dynamic control laws are designed based on the adaptive integral sliding mode control to drive the underactuated autonomous underwater vehicle to sail at the desired velocities. At the same time, the auxiliary control laws and the adaptive laws are introduced to eliminate the influence of parameter perturbations and external disturbances, respectively. The stability of the control system is guaranteed by the Lyapunov theorem, which shows that the system is asymptotically stable and all tracking errors are asymptotically convergent. At the end, numerical simulations are carried out to demonstrate the effectiveness and robustness of the proposed controller.

This paper focuses on developing a data-driven trajectory tracking control approach for autonomous underwater vehicles (AUV) under uncertain external disturbance and time-delay. A novel model-free adaptive predictive control (MFAPC) approach based on a fuzzy state observer (FSO) was designed to achieve high precision. Concretely, the mathematical model of AUV motion was analyzed, and simplified via model decoupling, thus providing the model basis with an explicit physical explanation for the controller. Second, the MFAPC scheme for a multiple-inputs and multiple-outputs (MIMO) discrete time system was derived, that estimates system external disturbance. The controller can online estimate and predictive time-varying parameter pseudo-Jacobian matrix (PJM) to establish equivalent state space data-model for AUV motion system. Third, the Takagi–Sugeno (T–S) fuzzy model based state observer was designed to combine with the MFAPC scheme for the first time, which was used to online decline the state error generated by system uncertain time-delay. In addition, the stability of the proposed control scheme was analyzed. Finally, two trajectory tracking scenarios were designed to verify the effectiveness and robustness of the proposed FMFAPC scheme, and the simulations are implemented using the realistic parameters of T-SEA AUV.