Preliminary experiments in fully actuated model based control with six degree-of-freedom coupled dynamical plant models for underwater vehicles

This paper reports a comparative experimental evaluation of one non-model-based proportional derivative (PD) 6 degree-of-freedom (6-DOF) controller and one model-based 6-DOF controller designed to enable fully actuated underwater vehicles to perform 6-DOF set-point regulation and trajectory tracking. We show analytically the non-model-based PD controller is capable of performing locally asymptotically stable set-point regulation. We show analytically the model-based controller is capable of locally asymptotically stable 6-DOF trajectory tracking. Experimental results with the Johns Hopkins University remotely operated vehicle (JHU ROV) show 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.