Waypoint Tracking of Large Diameter Unmanned Underwater Vehicles with X-stern Configuration

Abstract

-This paper focuses on a horizontal waypoint tracking and a speed control of large diameter unmanned underwater vehicles (LDUUVs) with X-stern configuration plane. The concerned design problem is converted into an asymptotic stabilization of the error dynamics with respect to the desired yaw angle and surge speed. It is proved that the error dynamics under the proposed control scheme based on the linear control and the feedback linearization can be considered as a cascade system; the cascade system is asymptotically stable if its nominal systems are so. This stability connection enables to separately deal with the waypoint tracking problem and the speed control one. By using the sector nonlinearity, the nominal system with nonlinearities is modeled as a polytopic linear parameter varying (LPV) system with parametric uncertainties. Then, sufficient linear matrix inequality (LMI) conditions for its asymptotic stabilizability are derived in the sense of Lyapunov stability criterion. An example is given to show the validity of the proposed methodology.