Energy-Saving Depth Control of an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle Using an Event-Triggered Sliding Mode Controller

In order to improve the endurance of underwater vehicles and make it possible for the underwater vehicle to inspect long-distance water tunnels, a sliding mode control method based on event triggering is proposed for the depth control of underwater vehicles from the perspective of energy saving. Firstly, the kinematics and dynamics models of underwater vehicle dive surface are established. Secondly, an event-triggered sliding mode controller is designed. According to the Lyapunov function, the stability of the designed controller is proved by theoretical analysis, and Zeno phenomena will not appear in the closed-loop control system. Compared with other controllers, the simulation results show that this controller can effectively realize the depth control of AUV, has strong adaptability and robustness to unmodeled nonlinear dynamics and bounded disturbances, and has the effect of saving computing resources.