Command governor adaptive control for an unmanned underwater vehicle

This paper presents the design and simulation of a command governor based adaptive controller (CGAC) for a remotely operated underwater vehicle. The command governor modification is applied for the first time to an underwater vehicle simulation of the actual vehicle for improved transient performance and disturbance rejection. The vehicle dynamics are assumed to be decoupled thus allowing for the design of separate heading and depth controllers. The results show that in contrast to standard adaptive controllers, command governor based adaptive controllers are able to produce better transient performance as well as improve the overall response even at low learning rates. Furthermore, simulation results verify the disturbance rejection capability of the command governor based adaptive controller, which is necessary to effectively and safely operate an unmanned underwater vehicle in real environments.