Control of an Autonomous Underwater Glider using Integral Super-twisting Sliding Mode Control (ISTSMC)

Development of a robust controller for an autonomous underwater glider (AUG) is a challenging task since a glider is an under-actuated and highly nonlinear system. In this paper a robust integral sliding mode with super-twisting algorithm is proposed for the trajectory tracking control of an autonomous underwater glider with external disturbances. The simulations are restricted to longitudinal plane of the glider. The control scheme is developed based on a integral sliding mode control (ISMC) and super-twisting sliding mode control. The advantages of this approach are easy implementation, the stabilization is in finite time, and the robustness is guaranteed. The performance of the proposed control algorithm is compared to original ISMC. Simulation results have shown that the proposed control system demonstrated a good performance under nominal system and a better rejection of the induced disturbance as compared to integral sliding mode control.