Fault‐Tolerant Control for Path Following of Underactuated Autonomous Underwater Vehicle With Input Delays and Output Constraints

ABSTRACT This article addresses the fault‐tolerant control problem for underactuated autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) within the framework of path following control, aiming to effectively overcome the challenges posed by input delays, unknown actuator faults, and output constraints. The main contributions of this study include the following aspects: First, an asymmetric barrier Lyapunov function (ABLF) is constructed to analyze system boundedness, ensuring that the system output remains within predefined performance bounds and does not exceed desired limits. Second, an adaptive fault‐tolerant controller is designed to maintain the boundedness of all system errors, even in the presence of unknown actuator faults. Third, an integral compensatory controller is proposed to effectively mitigate the effects of input delays. Finally, theoretical analysis and simulation results demonstrate that the proposed control strategy effectively overcomes the combined challenges of output constraints, actuator faults, and input delays for underactuated AUVs.