Pitch Channel Tracking Control of an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle with Delayed Output

A linearized and reduced-order pitch channel model of an experimental autonomous underwater vehicle AUV-150 is considered. A sliding mode controller (SMC) is designed by considering the parametric variations in the state of the pitch channel. A delayed output estimator is designed by considering a delay in the measurement signal of pitch channel dynamics. The proposed SMC based delayed output estimator tracks the vehicle position under parametric variations and time-varying disturbances. The closed-loop stability is analysed. The observer error and tracking error asymptotic convergence is realized. Furthermore, controller performance is demonstrated through simulation results using MATLAB Simulink R2019b (9.7.0.1471314).