Preliminary experiments in nonlinear model-based tracking control of underwater vehicles with three degree-of-freedom fully-coupled dynamical plant models

This paper reports a comparative experimental evaluation of one non-model-based proportional derivative (PD) 3 degree-of-freedom (DOF) controller and two model-based 3-DOF controllers designed to enable a fully actuated underwater vehicle to perform exact trajectory tracking of the X, Y, and heading degrees-of-freedom. We show the non-model-based controller is capable of performing globally asymptotically stable set-point regulation. We show the model-based controllers are capable of asymptotically stable trajectory tracking. The reported controllers were experimentally evaluated on the Johns Hopkins University remotely operated vehicle (JHUROV). We report the model-based controller's mean absolute position and velocity tracking error is significantly smaller than the non-model-based PD controller for coupled maneuvers.