On the use of adaptive/integral actions, for six-degrees-of-freedom control of autonomous underwater vehicles

In this paper, the control of autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) in six-degrees-of-freedom (6-DOFs) is analyzed in a comparison study among several controllers. At steady state, the vehicle needs to compensate for two dynamic effects, the ocean current and the restoring forces; the appropriateness of the adaptive/integral action designed with respect to the persistent effects is discussed. Moreover, for each controller, an adaptive/integral proportional derivative (PD) plus gravity compensation-like version is derived and eventually modified so as to achieve null steady-state error under modeling uncertainty and presence of ocean current. Numerical simulations are presented to better illustrate the controllers' behavior.