A comparative study between switching and adaptive controllers for a remotely operated vehicle

This paper considers the tracking control problem of an underwater vehicle subject to different load configurations, that result in considerable variations of its mass and inertial parameters. For this class of mode-switch processes, traditional control techniques are not adequate to guarantee the required performance when a change of configuration occurs. Advanced control techniques have been analysed; a switching control and an adaptive control have been developed with the aim to compare the performance of these types of controllers. The stability of the two controllers has been analysed using the Lyapunov theory and their performance has been evaluated by numerical simulations. On the basis of numerical tests, when an adequate a priori knowledge of different vehicle configurations is available, the switching controller is found to be the better control strategy with respect to an adaptive solution because of its significantly reduced transient response.