Planar path-following tracking control for an autonomous underwater vehicle in the horizontal plane

The combined problems of path-following tracking control for an under-actuated autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) on the horizontal plane are addressed in this paper. Given three types of smooth and 2-D desired trajectory including straight line path, curve path and circular path in the horizontal plane, the designed path-following control algorithm uses AUV kinematic and dynamic models with cross-track error method and line of sight to compute the desired orientation and velocities, at the same time it also forces the AUV to tracking the desired three types of path which are specified in advance. Numerical simulation is presented to validate the proposed control approach. Simulation results illustrate the good performance of the control system proposed with tracking errors converge to zero fast and smoothly in exponential form at last, which show that the tracking effect remains good and satisfactory that can provide an effective theoretical guidance and technical support for the control system design of the AUV in future.