Vertical Profile Diving and Floating Motion Control of the Underwater Glider Based on Fuzzy Adaptive LADRC Algorithm

Abstract

The underwater glider is a kind of novel invention that has been proven to be perfect for long-duration, wide-range marine environmental monitoring tasks. It is controlled by changing the buoyancy and adjusting the posture. For precise control of the underwater glider’s trajectory, a fuzzy adaptive linear active disturbance rejection control (LADRC) is designed in this paper. This controller allows the glider to dive to a predetermined depth precisely and float at a specific depth. In addition, the controller takes some important factors into account, such as model uncertainty, environmental disturbances, and the limited dynamic output of the actual mechanical actuator. Finally, simulation results show the superiority of this fuzzy adaptive LADRC control method. Particularly, when the underwater glider was controlled to dive 100 m at a predetermined attitude angle θ = −1 rad, the maximum overshoot of FLADRC is reduced by 75.1%, 56.6% relative to PID, LADRC, respectively.