This paper presents the detailed modeling and simulation of the dynamic coupling between an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) and a manipulator. The modeling processes are described with the incorporation of the most dominating hydrodynamic effects such as added mass, lift and drag forces. The hydrodynamic coefficients are derived using strip theory and are adjusted according to dynamical similarity. A fuzzy decoupling controller (FDC) is proposed for an autonomous underwater vehicle-manipulator system (UVMS) which consists of two subsystems, an underwater vehicle and a manipulator. The proposed controller uses a fuzzy algorithm (FA) to adaptively tune the gain matrix of the error function (EF). The EF is described by the integral sliding surface function. This technique allows the off-diagonal elements developed for decoupling the system to be incorporated in the gain matrix. Tracing the FA and EF back to the principle of feedback linearization, one further obtains evidence about the decoupling and stability of the system. Moreover, a desired trajectory with the consideration of the dynamic coupling of the AUV is designed to reduce the thruster forces and manipulator’s torques. This technique provides high performance in terms of tracking error norms and expended energy norms. A major contribution of this study is that it adopts the off-diagonal elements to exploit the dynamic coupling between the degrees of freedom of the subsystem and the dynamic coupling between the two subsystems. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness and robustness of the proposed technique in the presence of parameter uncertainties and external disturbances.

This paper presents new motion planning and robust coordinated control schemes for trajectory tracking of the underwater vehicle-manipulator system (UVMS) subjected to model uncertainties, time-varying external disturbances, payload and sensory noises. A redundancy resolution technique with a new secondary task and nonlinear function is proposed to generate trajectories for the vehicle and manipulator. In this way, the vehicle attitude and manipulator position are aligned in such a way that the interactive forces are reduced. To resist sensory measurement noises, an extended Kalman filter (EKF) is utilized to estimate the UVMS states. Using these estimates, a tracking controller based on feedback Linearization with both the joint-space and task-space tracking errors is proposed. Moreover, the inertial delay control (IDC) is incorporated in the proposed control scheme to estimate the lumped uncertainties and disturbances. In addition, a fuzzy compensator based on these estimates via IDC is introduced for reducing the undesired effects of perturbations. Trajectory tracking tasks on a five-degrees-of-freedom (5-DOF) underwater vehicle equipped with a 3-DOF manipulator are numerically simulated. The comparative results demonstrate the performance of the proposed controller in terms of tracking errors, energy consumption and robustness against uncertainties and disturbances.