From PD to Nonlinear Adaptive Depth-Control of a Tethered Autonomous Underwater Vehicle

This paper deals with an experimental comparison between a proportional derivative (PD) controller and an adaptive nonlinear state feedback one, both applied on a tethered autonomous underwater vehicle. The aim is to show the behavior of the closed loop system in the nominal case for each of these two controllers, and then to test their robustness towards some parameters changes. The PD on one hand has a good performance for systems with an unknown model. The adaptive control law on the other hand is known to adjust the unknown parameters of the plant in order to converge to the desired trajectory. This study shows experimental results performed using each of the above mentioned control laws.