An SO(3)-Based Attitude Control With Saturation Constraints for Underactuated Underwater Vehicles
Yuliang Wang, Han Bao, Chunlei Guo, Guy Williams, Yiping Li, Hongbin Zhang, Shuxue Yan
Abstract
This paper presents a novel adaptive attitude control method for underactuated underwater vehicles (UUVs) based on an <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$SO(3)$</tex-math></inline-formula> that explicitly considers actuator nonlinearities and hydrodynamic uncertainties. The proposed controller achieves robust attitude tracking, including large pitch angles up to <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\pm 90^{\circ }$</tex-math></inline-formula>. The outer-loop kinematics controller employs <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$SO(3)$</tex-math></inline-formula> exponential mapping and an auxiliary variable to decouple the Euler attitude angles, while the inner-loop dynamics controller uses a novel finite-time integral sliding surface and incorporates saturation constraints, dead zones, and dynamic actuator effects. An interval type-2 fuzzy logic system (IT2-FLS) adaptively estimates and compensates for model uncertainties. This controller design, based on a saturation function, effectively mitigates performance degradation caused by control input amplitude limitations. Indoor pool experiments confirm that the proposed approach achieves stable attitude control even at extreme pitch angles, consistent with the theoretical analysis.
BibTeX
@inproceedings{ral2026_anso3basedattitu,
title = {An SO(3)-Based Attitude Control With Saturation Constraints for Underactuated Underwater Vehicles},
author = {Yuliang Wang and Han Bao and Chunlei Guo and Guy Williams and Yiping Li and Hongbin Zhang and Shuxue Yan},
booktitle = {RA-L 2026},
year = {2026}
}