Heading control of AUV based on GA and fractional order technology

  Objectives  Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) is an important tool for ocean exploration and exploitation, which plays an important role in ocean resources exploration, underwater equipment maintenance, underwater search and rescue, etc. Heading control of AUV is the fundamental function to accomplish underwater mission. At present, conventional Integer-Order PID (IOPID) controller is widely used for heading control in domestic engineering. However, its robustness is poor and parameter setting is complex.

  Methods  Due to the shortcomings mentioned above, a heading controller based on Fractional-Order PID(FOPID)technology is proposed, and Genetic Algorithm(GA)is adopted to automatically tune the control gains and enable the practical implementation of the controller. The numerical simulations for PID, GA based IOPID and GA based FOPID are compared respectively by trial-and-error method.

  Results  The results showed that, compared with the other two controllers, the GA based FOPID heading controller has a significantly reduced overshoot when the rise time and the steady-state error are basically equal,

  Conclusions  which indicates that the AUV applying the GA based FOPID is more effective and advantageous.