A nonlinear observer for AUVs in shallow water environment

This paper presents a passive nonlinear observer for station keeping of autonomous underwater vehicles (AUV) operating in shallow water area. Station keeping is the ability of a vehicle to maintain position and orientation with regard to a reference object. The observer is used to estimate the shallow water wave velocity. The observer is shown to be globally exponentially stable. The observer has been illustrated using an AUV and the simulation shows the good performance of the observer.