A model predictive based UUV control design from kinematic to dynamic tracking control

In this paper, the trajectory tracking control problem with model predictive control approach is investigated for Unmanned Underwater Vehicle (UUV) control. Firstly, the kinematic tracking controller based on model predictive control (MPC) is applied to reach the tracking control in a kinematic way. Compared with conventional backstepping control, MPC can solve the speed jump control problem very well. However, to deal with dynamic tracking control with the nonlinear UUV dynamic model, the computation cost of MPC will be tremendous and cannot meet the real-time requirement. Then, in order to deal with this problem, the MPC algorithm is cooperated with sliding mode control to reach a dynamic tracking control which can be robust with modeling uncertainty and disturbance. Finally, the experimental results show that the proposed method can solve speed jump and robust enough for tracking control compared with other benchmark method.