Abstract

Autonomous Underwater Vehicles have gained popularity for the last decades, especially a lot of AUVs were considered as the most suitable tool for the purpose of reducing risks of people in dangerous marine operations. This paper presents the preliminary results of the research on hardware design, the controller of an autonomous underwater vehicle model for the task of survey, search and rescue ... With a compact design, AUV can operate in limited spaces. Through a unique ducted propeller and rudder located at the aft, the AUV can perform horizontal motion. It can also control pitch angle and depth motion by an inside mass shifter mechanism (MSM) which changes the vehicle center of gravity. In addition, The AUV is integrated with powerful eletronic system, highprecision sensors helping it carries on missions from simple to complex. The use of Sliding Mode Control (SMC) to independently design the heading and depth controllers for AUV demonstrates the steady stability of the controllers with the nonlinear model, uncertainty parameters and disturbances. Finally, the simulation results show that the SMC controllers can control the AUV nonlinear model to track the desired steering angle and depth with high accuracy and stability.