Robust adaptive path following control for autonomous underwater vehicles with virtual guidance

To achieve path following control of an underactuated autonomous underwater vehicle(AUV) with model parameter uncertainties, diffeomorphism transformation is introduced to establish the path tracking error expressed in Serret-Frenet frame which is attached to the virtual guidance moving along the path. Control laws for surge velocity, evolution rate of virtual guidance and yaw moment of AUV are obtained through recursive backstepping design procedure to reduce the tracking error. The robust adaptive controller is employed to compensate the model uncertainties through feedback loop with adaptive laws are designed with Lyapunov stability theorem, so all signals in the closed loop of AUV path following error system are guaranteed to be uniformly ultimately bounded and the tracking error is proven to converge to a small neighborhood of origin. Finally, effectiveness of the proposed controller is validated by the simulation results.