Advanced Autonomous Underwater Vehicles Attitude Control with [Formula: see text] Backstepping Adaptive Control Strategy

This paper presents a novel attitude control design, which combines [Formula: see text] adaptive control and backstepping control together, for Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) in a highly dynamic and uncertain environment. The Euler angle representation is adopted in this paper to represent the attitude propagation. Kinematics and dynamics of the attitude are in the strict feedback form, which leads the backstepping control strategy serving as the baseline controller. Moreover, by bringing fast and robust adaptation into the backstepping control architecture, our controller is capable of dealing with time-varying uncertainties from modeling and external disturbances in dynamics. This attitude controller is proposed for coupled pitch-yaw channels. For inevitable roll excursions, a Lyapunov function-based optimum linearization method is presented to analyze the stability of the roll angle in the operation region. Theoretical analysis and simulation results are given to demonstrate the feasibility of the developed control strategy.