abstract
- © 2022 Elsevier B.V.. All rights reserved.A robust design of a trajectory tracker for an unmanned underwater vehicle under the influence of disturbances is addressed in this article. The controller policy is formulated upon an adaptive sliding mode approach, where a manifold of a non-singular terminal sliding mode ensures the tracking errors to converge to a locality close to zero in practical finite-time. Moreover, the adaptation dynamics allow no overestimation of control gains, reducing chattering as well as the control efforts, and maintain robustness against external perturbations with unknown boundaries. Simulation results conducted in a full mathematical model of the craft showcase the performance and feasibility of the suggested method to track the desired references, even with the vehicle subject to water currents.