Modeling and control of an autonomous underwater shuttle for the transport of benthic laboratories

This paper describes the design of the control and guidance systems of SIRENE, an autonomous underwater shuttle for the transport and accurate positioning of benthic laboratories on the seabed down a depth of 6000 meters. The paper introduces the nonlinear hydrodynamic model of the vehicle and derives a class of sliding mode control laws for vehicle stabilization and steering in the vertical and horizontal planes. The control algorithms are combined with a classical line-of-sight guidance law, and the performance of the resulting system is evaluated in a computer based simulation of a realistic mission scenario.