Switching adaptive control for a remotely operated vehicle

This paper considers the tracking control problem for an underwater vehicle subjected to different load configurations, that result in considerable variations of its mass and inertial parameters. Depending on the operative situation, the different possible vehicle configurations could not be known in advance. In general, it is not a priori known neither when the operating conditions are changed nor which is the new vehicle configuration after the change. The control of this class of mode-switch processes can not be adequately faced with traditional adaptive control techniques because of the too long time needed for adaptation when a change of the configuration occurs. To cope with this problem, an adaptive control strategy endowed with a supervised switching logic is proposed. This strategy is particularly suitable when the different possible vehicle configurations are not a priori known. The stability of this switched control system is analyzed using the Lyapunov theory and its performance is evaluated by numerical simulations.