Motion Control of Autonomous Underwater Helicopter Based on Linear Active Disturbance Rejection Control with Tracking Differentiator

As a new disk-shaped autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV), the autonomous underwater helicopter (AUH) is devoted to subsea operations, usually diving into the seabed and docking with a subsea docking system. Due to the motion control's performance, the AUH's stability and steady-state accuracy are affected remarkably while docking. Moreover, considering the difficulties of hydrodynamic modeling of AUHs, the classical model-based control method is unsuitable for AUHs. Moreover, there is a large gap between the hydrodynamic simulation results and real situations. Hence, based on the data-driven principle, the linear active disturbance rejection control with a tracking differentiator (LADRC-TD) algorithm is employed for AUH depths and heading control. As the simulation experiments prove, LADRC and LADRC-TD have better anti-interference performance when compared with PID. According to the pool experiments, overshoots of the LADRC-TD are 20 cm and 3 degrees for the depth control and heading control, respectively, which are superior to PID and LADRC. Meanwhile, the steady-state accuracy of the LADRC-TD is +/- 21 cm and +/- 2.5 degrees for the depth and heading control, respectively, which is inferior to PID and the same as LADRC.