Robust Trajectory Tracking Control for Underactuated Autonomous Underwater Vehicles in Uncertain Environments

This article addresses the tracking control problem of 3-D trajectories for underactuated underwater robotic vehicles operating in a constrained workspace including obstacles. More specifically, a robust nonlinear model predictive control (NMPC) scheme is presented for the case of underactuated autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) (i.e., unicycle-like vehicles actuated only in the surge, heave, and yaw). The purpose of the controller is to steer the unicycle-like AUV to the desired trajectory with guaranteed input and state constraints (e.g., obstacles, predefined vehicle velocity bounds, and thruster saturations) inside a partially known and dynamic environment where the knowledge of the operating workspace is constantly updated via the vehicle’s onboard sensors. In particular, considering the sensing range of the vehicle, obstacle avoidance with any of the detected obstacles is guaranteed by the online generation of a collision-free trajectory tracking path, despite the model dynamic uncertainties and the presence of external disturbances representing ocean currents and waves. Finally, realistic simulation studies verify the performance and efficiency of the proposed framework. Note to Practitioners —This article was motivated by the problem of robust trajectory tracking for an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) operating in an uncertain environment where the knowledge of the operating workspace (e.g., obstacle positions) is constantly updated online via the vehicle’s onboard sensors (e.g., multibeam imaging sonars and laser-based vision systems). In addition, there may be other system limitations (e.g., thruster saturation limits) and other operational constraints, induced by the need of various common underwater tasks (e.g., a predefined vehicle speed limit for inspecting the seabed, and mosaicking), where it should also be considered into the control strategy. However, based on the existing trajectory tracking control approaches for underwater robotics, there is a lack of an autonomous control scheme that provides a complete and credible control strategy that takes the aforementioned issues into consideration. Based on this, we present a reliable control strategy that takes into account the aforementioned issues, along with dynamic uncertainties of the model and the presence of ocean currents. In future research, we will extend the proposed methodology for multiple AUV performing collaborative inspection tasks in an uncertain environment.