Preliminary experiments in underactuated nonlinear model-based tracking control of underwater vehicles with three degree-of-freedom fully-coupled dynamical plant models: Theory and experimental evaluation

This paper reports a comparative experimental evaluation of one non-model-based proportional derivative (PD) 3-degree-of-freedom (3-DOF) controller and one model-based 3-DOF controller designed to enable an underactuated underwater vehicle to perform exact X-Y position and velocity tracking. We report a comparative experimental evaluation of the two controllers in free motion experiments. We conclude that the model-based controller´s mean absolute position and velocity tracking error is significantly smaller than the non-model-based PD controller for coupled maneuvers.