Autonomous Underwater Vehicle Control Using a Nonlinear Disturbance Observer Based Sliding Mode Controller

The sliding mode controller has characteristics that ensure stability and robustness against system uncertainty and disturbance. However, chattering occurs in the control inputs to compensate for system uncertainties and ensure that the system operates efficiently on the sliding surface. When the disturbance is large, using a sliding mode controller requires a large control gain value, which also increases chattering and reduces performance. Therefore, in this study, a nonlinear disturbance observer was used to compensate for external disturbances such as currents and waves and uncertainty in the control system for autonomous underwater vehicles. Accordingly, a robust controller can be implemented while reducing the control gain. The disturbance observer serves to ensure that the behavior of the actual system is closer to the nominal model by compensating for uncertainties between the actual system model and the nominal model during the control process. Therefore, the simulation results show that the performance and robustness of the autonomous underwater vehicle controller are improved by introducing a disturbance observer.