Adaptive Robust Control for Trajectory Tracking of Autonomous underwater Vehicles on Horizontal Plane

This paper addresses the trajectory tracking problem of autonomous underwater vehicles in the horizontal plane. Adaptive sliding mode control is employed in order to achieve a robust behavior against some uncertainty and ocean current disturbances, assuming that disturbance and its derivative are bounded by unknown boundary levels. The proposed approach is based upon a dual layer adaptive law, which is independent from the knowledge of disturbance boundary limit and its derivative. This approach tends to play a significant role in reducing the chattering effect that is prevalent in the conventional sliding mode controllers. To guarantee the stability of the proposed control technique, the Lyapunov theory is used. The simulation results illustrate the validity of the proposed control scheme compared to the finite-time tracking control method.