CASCADED UUV TRAJECTORY TRACKING CONTROL BASED ON MODEL PREDICTIVE AND SLIDING MODE CONTROL

This paper describes a cascaded dynamic trajectory tracking control approach based on model predictive control (MPC) and sliding mode control for unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs). The proposed method combines kinematic and dynamic controllers to achieve robust control. First, MPC is employed to realize tracking control kinematically. The MPC algorithm is proposed as a solution to the speed jump problem. Considering the computational burden for nonlinear UUV dynamic models, the MPC method is used in conjunction with sliding mode control to achieve dynamic tracking control, which solves problems of modeling uncertainty and external disturbances. Experimental results showed that the proposed method could solve the speed jump and thruster saturation problems more effectively than other methods could.