Subsea pipelines are key facilities for marine resource development, however are prone to damage from ocean current disturbances and corrosion, requiring regular inspection. Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) are important tools for pipeline inspection, with path tracking technology being core to their task completion. However, the AUV system’s high nonlinearity, time-varying characteristics and external disturbances pose challenges to precise control. This paper designs a sliding mode control system based on a reduced-order extended state observer to solve the AUV’s pipeline tracking problem under complex conditions and achieve 3D path tracking. The reduced-order state observer approximates unknown disturbances, transforms the control problem, and designs controllers. The system stability is proven via Lyapunov stability theory. Simulation comparison experiments show the controller has better performance, and field experiments verify its effectiveness.
Yan et al. (Sun,) studied this question.