Control of an Underactuated Underwater Vehicle in 3D Space under Field-of-View Constraints

This paper presents a state feedback control approach for the motion of an under-actuated, pitch-capable Unmanned Underwater Vehicle (UUV) in a 3-dimensional workspace. The objective is to steer the vehicle to a desired configuration with respect to (w.r.t.) a target of interest, in the presence of field-of-view (f.o.v.) constraints due to a vision-based sensor system. The control design is based on dipolar reference vector fields and tools from viability theory, and guarantees the convergence of the vehicle in a neighborhood of the desired configuration, without violating the f.o.v. constraints. The unactuated degrees of freedom (d.o.f.) are shown to be input-to-state stable (ISS). Simulations demonstrate the efficacy of the approach.