Guidance Controller Design for Autonomous Underwater Vehicles

Abstract This paper is concerned with the development of the guidance controller for Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs). A three-layer controller architecture is proposed to enhance the autonomy of the vehicle. At the bottom layer, the local feedback controllers are designed using H ∞ /H 2 control design technique to directly drive the actuators. A 4-degree-of-freedom controller is used to incorporate the sensor and actuator faults and to account for the interaction between the regulation and the diagnostic module. Predictive Control (PC) design technique is employed at the middle layer (guidance) to optimally manoeuvre the AUV along a desired trajectory. Simulation results are presented to demonstrate the performance of the proposed technique.