Control system design and experiment for large-scale high-speed unmanned underwater vehicle

  Objectives  In order to guide a large-scale high-speed unmanned underwater vehicle (UUV) along the desired path smoothly in 3D space while taking the task requirements of its control performance and hydrodynamics into consideration, a fuzzy line-of-sight (LOS) guidance law with robustness is proposed.

  Methods  Based on decoupling control, an integrated separate PID algorithm is designed for velocity, heading, depth and pitch. The dynamic characteristics are then modified by introducing filters for commands and state feedback. Finally, the control performance under varying velocities is tested by conducting lake trials.

  Results   The experimental results show that, under the velocities of 6, 9, 13 kn, the vehicle can follow the desired path and depth within a reasonable margin of error, which demonstrates that the proposed control system is valid.

  Conclusions  Besides, the achievements lay a theoretical foundation for the motion control algorithm design of next-generation unmanned underwater test vehicles.