Nonstationary Control Parameter Prediction for Underwater Gliders Utilizing an Innovative Transformer-Based Model

As a new type of unmanned autonomous marine observation platform, underwater gliders (UGs) offer advantages such as low energy consumption and long operational ranges. However, during the gliding process, the complex marine environment often leads to abrupt changes in short-term control parameters, complicating the data and rendering them more challenging to predict. This typically poses difficulties in adjusting control parameters based on human experience, thereby significantly reducing UG control efficiency. To address this issue, this paper proposes a novel method termed DFFormer, aimed at enhancing the predictive accuracy of the rudder angles during UG motion. The proposed method integrates discrete wavelet transform (DWT) for rudder angle signal decomposition and employs a fast Fourier transform-based attention mechanism (FFT-Attention) to effectively capture and analyze its frequency- and time-domain characteristics. Notably, the method leverages a Transformer architecture to process the decomposed signals through multiple parallel pathways, substantially improving the capability to forecast the complex and variable control parameters of UGs. The effectiveness and practicality of the proposed method are demonstrated through actual sea trials. The experimental results indicate that the proposed method surpasses traditional approaches in terms of accuracy and computational efficiency, exhibiting superior performance in predicting UG control parameters and, to some extent, enhancing their heading-keeping ability.