Research on Motion Control of Autonomous Underwater Vehicle Controlled by Thruster and Rudders

The motion of autonomous underwater vehicle(AUV) has the characters of coupling and nonlinearity.The motion controller with good performance is the precondition for AUV to accomplish tasks.Motion control of a small autonomous underwater vehicle controlled by thruster and rudders was researched.The velocity,depth and yaw control systems were introduced.Dynamics model of the AUV was constructed according to the control requirements.The actuators were introduced and a sliding mode algorithm was designed to control the motion of the AUV.In order to improve the response speed and eliminate chattering,the constant rate approaching item in exponential approaching law was substitute by variable rate item.An intelligent integral was introduced to improve the precision of the controller.The experiment results show that the sliding mode controller has good stability and robustness.The control system can meet the requirement of the basic tasks for the underwater vehicle.