Comparing Control Design Methods for Hybrid Configuration Underwater Vehicles

Unmanned underwater vehicles have been developed for a variety of applications, resulting in a range of control design methods and system configurations. Recent unmanned underwater vehicles with hybrid actuator configurations provide increased control capabilities, however the effectiveness of the various control design methods has not been quantitatively investigated for such configurations. To overcome the disparities in system configuration and control objective that prevent quantitative comparisons between the existing works, in this paper we implement a set of control design method combinations for a hybrid unmanned underwater vehicle. The resulting controllers vary in control law and control allocation methods. By simulating these controlled systems under a set of system uncertainties, we identify the influence of the different control design aspects on system uncertainty robustness. Quantifying their effects on control performance reveals novel insight into the effectiveness of design method combinations for uncertainty and fault tolerant control of hybrid unmanned underwater vehicles.