Adaptive simplified surge-heading tracking control for underwater vehicles with thruster’s dead-zone compensation

• Published in: Nonlinear dynamics Vol. 111; no. 14; pp. 13073 - 13088
• Main Authors: Yu, Caoyang, Zhong, Yiming, Lian, Lian, Xiang, Xianbo
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Dordrecht Springer Netherlands 01.07.2023; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Actuation; Adaptive control; Automotive Engineering; Classical Mechanics; Compensators; Configurations; Control; Control algorithms; Control systems design; Control theory; Controllers; Design; Dynamical Systems; Engineering; Error analysis; Feedback linearization; Fuzzy logic; Mechanical Engineering; Motion control; Neural networks; Original Paper; Robustness (mathematics); Stability analysis; State observers; Systems stability; Thrusters; Tracking control; Tracking errors; Tracking systems; Uncertainty; Underwater vehicles; Vehicles; Vibration; Extended state observer; Trajectory tracking; Feedback control; Dead-zone compensation; Underwater vehicles
• ISSN: 0924-090X; 1573-269X
• DOI: 10.1007/s11071-023-08512-9

Remotely operated underwater vehicles are usually equipped with four horizontal thrusters that form an X-shaped actuation configuration. Yet, thruster’s inherent dead-zone may possibly result in strong chatter of moment inputs and motion tracking of underwater vehicles. This paper proposes a two-layer cascade tracking controller together with a dead-zone compensator, in order to achieve simplified and effective surge-heading control of underwater vehicles equipped with an X-shaped horizontal actuation configuration. For the sake of brevity, the surge and heading dynamics are firstly unified as a second-order dynamic system where the known and unknown parts are separated, respectively. Based on this model, a feedback linearization control law with a combined error measure is designed in the first-layer cascade system for the simplified dynamics tracking. Then, a reduced-order extended state observer without using any priori knowledge of uncertainties is utilized in the second-layer cascade system to estimate the complex uncertainty of the dynamics. It is noted that this two-layer tracking controller has only two gains to be adjusted, ensuring a simple calculation and microprogramming. Subsequently, a dedicated dead-zone compensator is proposed for the X-shaped actuation configuration and the input-to-state stability of the whole tracking system is analyzed. Finally, comparative numerical cases are provided to demonstrate the adaptivity and robustness of the designed surge-heading tracking controller, i.e., up to 56% reduction of the maximum surge tracking error owing to this dead-zone compensator and less than 0.03 ∘ of the heading steady state error against different initial states.