Demonstration of closed-loop trajectory control of an underwater vehicle

The design of the closed-loop control system is a primary issue for any underwater vehicle that is not controlled manually. Precise control of all vehicle movements is particularly difficult due to the high-order, nonlinear, uncertain nature of the dynamics of underwater systems. A new control system design methodology called sliding control has been shown to deal with these difficult problems effectively. In this paper, the methodology is reviewed and results from in-water tests are described.