A homography-based dynamic control approach applied to station keeping of autonomous underwater vehicles without linear velocity measurements

A homography-based dynamic control approach applied to station keeping of Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) without relying on linear velocity measurements is proposed. The homography estimated from images of a planar target scene captured by a downward-looking camera is directly used as feedback information. The full dynamics of the AUV are exploited in a hierarchical control design with inner-outer loop architecture. Enhanced by integral compensation actions and disturbance torque estimation, the proposed controller is robust with respect to model uncertainties and unknown currents. The performance of the proposed control approach is illustrated via both comparative simulation results conducted on a realistic AUV model and experimental validations on an in-house AUV.