Variable-speed path following of an over-actuated underwater vehicle

This paper introduces a unified control architecture for variable-speed path following of underwater vehicles with control surfaces and through-body thrusters through the entire non-zero speed profile. This architecture is composed of a robust control law and a smooth allocation flow. The former focuses on component control force and moment, while the latter is to allocate control law and solve the corresponding control command. Especially, threshold analysis and slipping distribution are resorted to ensure the proper command allocation of the bow and stern through-body thrusters. Finally, comparative simulations with different initial postures are given to show the outperformance of the above two-dimensional variable-speed path following controller in the presence of configuration switching.