Work

Cascaded guidance, state estimation, and control for depth tracking of underactuated autonomous underwater vehicles

Year: 2025

Type: article

Abstract: Cascaded guidance, state estimation, and control systems have been successfully implemented in autonomous underwater vehicles. However, disordered convergence sequences among subsystems fundamentally induce system oscillations and instabilities. Here, we introduce a temporal-sequencing-convergent cascaded guidance, state estimation, and control system for depth-tracking of underactuated autonomous underwater vehicles. It establishes an ordered convergence architecture: state estimation converges first with a planning window td, followed by control execution with a planning time window tc, and guidance finally converges with a planning time window tf, adhering to a temporal-sequencing-convergent criterion td < tc < tf. This architecture, validated through experiments, ensures stable and efficient depth-tracking performance owing to well-ordered convergence of subsystems. Conversely, experiments violating the temporal-sequencing-convergent criterion exhibited prominent oscillatory depth-tracking responses. Our method outperformed selected approaches, achieving a lower average depth-tracking error of 1.32 cm under sudden external disturbances. Notably, even with prominent pitch-tracking errors using a PD controller, our proposed guidance design also showcased remarkable attack-angle compensation capability, thereby maintaining precise depth-tracking performance. Yang Qu and colleagues propose a temporal-sequencing-convergent cascaded guidance, state estimation, and control system that enables autonomous underwater vehicles to accurately maintain their depth. This architecture ensures stable and efficient depth-tracking performance due to the well-ordered convergence of subsystems.

Source: Communications Engineering

DOI: 10.1038/s44172-025-00521-3

Authors: Yang Qu, Qin Zhang, Xianbo Xiang, Shaolong Yang, Lilong Cai

Institutions: Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology

Language: English

Topic: Underwater Vehicles and Communication Systems

Subfield: Ocean Engineering

Field: Engineering

Domain: Physical Sciences

Open Access status: gold

Estimated APC paid: $2,190

Funders: Natural Science Foundation of Hubei Province, Ministry of Education, India