Disturbance suppression and NN compensation based trajectory tracking of underactuated AUV

For the trajectory tracking of underactuated autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) subject to disturbances, a disturbance suppression and neural network (NN) compensation based control strategy is proposed. Lyapunov method is used to guide the overall design of control system. To deal with the underactuation, Light of sight (LOS) guidance is used to establish the relationship between heading angle and cross-track error. To suppress the external disturbance, L2-gain design is employed to guarantee the controller robustness. To improve the tracking accuracy, on-line neural networks with guaranteed stability are designed to identify unknown dynamics including the derivatives of virtual controls and errors induced by input saturation. Numerical simulation is performed to verify the effectiveness of the proposed control strategy. Compared with sliding mode controller (SMC) and disturbance observer approaches, the proposed controller performs better in terms of robustness and the input saturation is alleviated.