Fast Trajectory Tracking Control of Underactuated Autonomous Underwater Vehicles

Abstract

The paper proposes a fast trajectory tracking control strategy for underactuated autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) moving in horizontal plane. By expanding the existing nonsingular terminal sliding mode control (NTSMC) approach, a fast NTSMC approach is developed to achieve precise and fast tracking, and meanwhile to afford a faster convergence rate for underactuated AUVs compared with the existing NTSMC approach. Simulations show the superiority of the presented control approach over the existing NTSMC approach in terms of convergence rate.