Motion control of an underwater wheeled vehicle in constrained pond

This paper introduces an underwater wheeled vehicle towing system which is composed of an anterior traction winch, a posterior brake winch, wire rope and fixed pulleys. Under the coordinate driving of two winches which one draw in the cable while another one let out the cable, the wheeled vehicle can be towed to achieve the accelerating, uniform speed and decelerating movement on the track which is installed at the bottom of the cuboid pool. Aiming at the coupling characteristics of double driving forces acting on the underwater wheeled vehicle, a multimodal switchover control strategy is proposed. According to the large inertia, variable load, time delay, parameter uncertainty and strong nonlinearity features of the underwater wheeled vehicle towing system, a controller based on the terminal sliding mode variable structure control method is designed.