Depth Control for Towed Vehicle

In this paper, a depth control problem for towed vehicle is considered. Generally the depth of the towed vehicle is not steady by the effect of the vibration of towing line. In order to keep the constant depth, a controller for variable horizontal tail fins, which are equipped on the towed vehicle considered this paper, is designed. Since the mathematical model of the towed vehicle can be expressed as a nonlinear equation, a nonlinear controller for the tail planes is derived by using linear matrix inequalities (LMIs).