Adaptive DOB control of underwater robots

This paper presents an adaptive DOB (disturbance observer) controller for underwater robots, which consists of DOB as an inner-loop controller and a non-regressor based adaptive controller as an outer-loop controller. This control scheme does not require any parametric information, and is robust with respect to external disturbance as well as the variation of the nominal model used to construct DOB. Results of computer simulation using a hydrodynamic model of an underwater robot, ODIN, show the effectiveness of the adaptive DOB controller compared to PID, PID DOB, and adaptive controller. Experimental investigation of the presented controller is in progress on ODIN and results are also presented at IROS 2003.