Nonlinear feedback control for trajectory tracking of an unmanned underwater vehicle

This paper presents a nonlinear input-state feedback linearization controller for tracking trajectory on horizontal plane with the rudder of an unmanned underwater vehicle (UUV). UUV system is strongly nonlinear, but the model is often simplified into linearization under some strict assumptions in some traditional linear control methods for the need of the control laws, and the linearization may induce large modeling errors and cause severe problems in the practical applications. In this paper, an input-state feedback linearization controller is designed to transform the nonlinear UUV model into an equivalent linear model. The trajectory tracking system is confirmed to be stable and UUV tracks trajectory approximately by pole placement through properly choosing the virtual input. Simulation results illustrate the system is stable and has robust with proposed control scheme.