Path following backstepping control of underactuated unmanned underwater vehicle

This paper addresses the problem of steering an unmanned underwater vehicle (UUV) along a given path. Firstly in order to solve this problem, a motional and dynamic model of the UUV in the horizontal plane is built. Then suppose the desired path is known, at the same time the Serret-Frenet frame and the reference point of the path is brought in. In the basis of this, the error following dynamic model and the controller which bases on the back-stepping law and Lyapunov theory are founded. It can make the following error approach to zero in arbitrarily petite area effectively. Then something is done to verify the controllers´ correctness theoretically. In order to prove the effectiveness of the path following controller which has been designed, the simulation of cosine and straight desired path is carried out. The simulation results show the designed controller can make the UUV walk along the assigned path and the path following error converges rapidly.