Motion control of towed underwater vehicles with movable wings using a high-gain observer based approach

This paper presents a motion control method for towed underwater vehicles (TUVs) with movable wings. The dynamical model is given and some basic characteristics of the system are analyzed. Based on the model, we design two types of output-feedback controllers to regulate the depth and attitude of the TUV. The one of the controllers is based on the concept of high-gain observers, and the other one deploys an observer applying a linear Kalman filter gain to the nonlinear dynamical model. To evaluate and compare their control performances, motion control simulations were conducted. The results show that the high-gain observer-based controller is effective and superior to the other output-feedback controller.