The effect of the ocean current in the thrusters closed-loop performance for underwater intervention

This paper aims at investigating the effects of the ocean current in the thrusters closed-loop performance. In particular, the intervention case, and thus the vehicle slowly moving, is of interest. Vehicle controllers are commonly designed without taking into account both the thruster dynamics and the presence of ocean current which, however, influence the closed loop. A fixed gains PID and an adaptive controller are designed in ideal conditions, i.e. with no thruster dynamics and no current, and then numerically validated by including both those effects. Results show that the adaptive controller is less sensitive to ocean current effects than the PID one with the capacity to adjust control gains to thruster dynamics.