Adaptive Fuzzy Sliding Mode Controller for Underwater Vehicles

This paper proposes a fuzzy sliding mode controller (SMC) for autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs). Control of an AUV is a challenging problem due to the highly nonlinear dynamics and unpredictable environmental disturbances. Therefore, AUV is a non-linear multi-input multi-output (MIMO) system. The proposed adaptive fuzzy controller can approximate the unknown system and provide strong robustness against model uncertainties and external disturbances. Its parameters will be adapted online to utilize control energy more efficiently.