Design of Fuzzy PD Depth Controller for an AUV

This paper presents a design of fuzzy PD depth controller for the autonomous underwater vehicle entitled KAUV-1. The vehicle is shaped like a torpedo with light weight and small size and used for marine exploration and monitoring. The KAUV-1 has a unique ducted propeller located at aft end with yawing actuation acting as a rudder. For depth control, the KAUV-1 uses a mass shifter mechanism to change its center of gravity, consequently, can control pitch angle and depth of the vehicle. A design of classical PD depth controller for the KAUV-1 was presented and analyzed. However, it has inherent drawback of gains, which is their values are fixed. Meanwhile, in different operation modes, vehicle dynamics might have different effects on the behavior of the vehicle. In this reason, control gains need to be appropriately changed according to vehicle operating states for better performance. This paper presents a self-tuning gain for depth controller using the fuzzy logic method which is based on the classical PD controller. The self-tuning gains are outputs of fuzzy logic blocks. The performance of the self-tuning gain controller is simulated using Matlab/Simulink and is compared with that of the classical PD controller.