An autonomous underwater vehicle is an unmanned underwater vessel to investigate sea environments and deep see resources. To be completely autonomous, AUV must have the ability to home and dock to the launcher. There are much system uncertainties in AUV modeling and disturbances in a deep seawater.
In spite of these difficulties, a sliding mode controller is designed to regulate and track any suggested paths to accomplish the homing and docking procedure. Because AUV system has the non-matched uncertainties, a novel idea is applied to this controller design. Next, by the appropriate cost functions, the homing and docking paths are generated in a space. In the planning the path, AUV can anticipate the docking position in advance, and include the launcher' s vertically repeating motion. In a docking situation, the failure judgment logic is being accomplished. By this judgment logic, AUV can decide whether it can dock to the launcher or not while it approaches. If the failure is judged, AUV can escape the launcher and retry the docking at the appropriate new position.
With these algorithm, AUV can home and dock to the launcher notwithstanding the water current and the launcher's severe varying motion.
