Adaptive Pitch-Axis Control for an AUV Based on Characteristic Modeling Method

Characteristic modeling is an effective engineering method for the control design, which has many successful applications in the military and civilian fields. In this paper, this technique is applied to the pitch-axis motion control of an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV). A characteristic model of the pitch dynamics of the AUV is established with its parameters identified on-line. Then, An adaptive controller is designed based on the obtained model, which consists of feedforward tracking control, golden-section adaptive control, differential control and integral control. Finally, the validity and accuracy of the controller are verified by several simulation results.