A Robust Control Paradigm for Path Following of an Underwater Robotic Vehicle

This paper addresses the 2D path following (PF) problem of an underwater robotic vehicle (URV) which is fully actuated in the horizontal plane. The majority of the prevalent PF techniques involve expressing the vehicle kinematics in the Serret-Frenet (S-F) frame. We propose a novel horizontal plane PF control strategy which obviates the requirement of expressing the body-fixed frame vehicle kinematics in an auxiliary frame such as the S-F frame. A multi-input-multi-output sliding mode controller is employed to realize the PF control objectives and withstand inherent parametric uncertainties in the URV dynamic model imparting a degree of robustness to the closed-loop system. Theoretical results on ensuring the controller feasibility are provided. Simulation results verify the theoretical developments and demonstrate the PF control system performance.