Design of an AUV Heading Attitude Controller Based on a Disturbance Observer

To address the problem of unsatisfactory control effects of the traditional proportional-integral-derivative (PID) control method when disturbances are encountered during the navigation of autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs), this paper designs a variable integral PID controller based on a disturbance observer (DO). The design of the controller is simple and easy to implement, and the control parameters can be conveniently selected. Taking an AUV with a torpedo exterior as an example, a heading attitude controller is designed. In simulations conducted for comparison with a traditional PID controller, the proposed DO-based variable integral PID controller shows better tracking and robustness in the presence of interference.