Path tracking control and simulation of underwater vehicle

Path tracking of underwater vehicle was discussed. The kinetic equations of 6-degrees of freedom underwater vehicles were given first, taking into account the gravity, buoyancy, thrust power and ocean current etc. Then a nonlinear controller, which includes an inner loop and an outer loop, was designed to track the geometric path. In inner loop, nonlinear compensation was imported to simplify the robot system to a linear system; in outer loop, negative feedback was used to correct the wrap between the actual path and ideal path. Simulation results about pursuing surface vehicles and tracking helical line were given to demonstrate the proposed scheme. Simulation results show that the strategy has nice performance of tracking ability.