Adaptive Prescribed Performance Trajectory Tracking for Uncertain Autonomous Underwater Vehicles With Input Saturation

Abstract:Accurate trajectory tracking is essential for autonomous underwater vehicles operating with uncertain hydrodynamics and limited thruster authority. This paper develops a low-complexity adaptive prescribed performance controller for uncertain underwater vehicle dynamics with coupled and saturated inputs. The proposed method adapts the performance functions directly through the mismatch between the requested and saturated control inputs, enlarging the performance funnels only when the available actuation cannot meet the nominal specifications. A coupled invariant-set analysis establishes boundedness of all closed-loop signals, prescribed bounds on the filtered tracking errors, and explicit feasibility conditions. Comparative simulations on a BlueROV2 underwater vehicle show that the adaptive design maintains prescribed performance during a figure-eight maneuver, whereas conventional prescribed performance control loses feasibility under input limits. A real-time pool experiment further demonstrates stable trajectory tracking and the practical implementation of the proposed method on an underwater robotic platform.

8 pages, 5 figures. Supplementary video included as ancillary material

Robotics (cs.RO); Systems and Control (eess.SY)

arXiv:2610.20957 [cs.RO]

(or arXiv:2610.20957v1 [cs.RO] for this version)

https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2610.20957 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration)

SupplementaryVideo.mp4

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