Dynamic positioning and way-point tracking of underactuated AUVs in the presence of ocean currents

This paper addresses the problem of dynamic positioning and way-point tracking of underactuated autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) in the presence of constant unknown ocean currents and parametric model uncertainty. A nonlinear adaptive controller is proposed that steers an AUV so as to track a sequence of points consisting of desired positions (x, y) in an inertial reference frame, followed by vehicle positioning at the final target point. The controller is first derived at the kinematic level assuming that the ocean current disturbance is known. An exponential observer is then designed and convergence of the resulting closed loop system trajectories is analyzed. Finally, integrator backstepping and Lyapunov based techniques are used to extend the kinematic controller to the dynamic case and to deal with model parameter uncertainty. Simulation results are presented and discussed.