2015 Indian Control Conference

Indian Institute of Technology Madras

January 5-7, 2015. Chennai, India

Single Input Fuzzy Logic Controller for Steering Control of

Autonomous Underwater Vehicle
Kunal N. Tiwari1 , Vinayak G. Asutkar2 and Laxman M. Waghmare3
Abstract Autonomous Underwater Vehicle(AUV) is a highly
non-linear and coupled system with uncertainty in the parameters. In this paper, proportional derivative (PD) like
conventional fuzzy logic controller (CFLC) with two inputs is
designed to control AUV in decoupled steering plane. Further
CFLC is reduced to a single input structure known as single
input fuzzy logic controller (SIFLC). The results of both SIFLC
and CFLC are comparable in nature, however SIFLC requires
minimal time for computation as compared to CFLC.
Index Terms Autonomous Underwater Vehicle, Fuzzy logic
controller, single input fuzzy logic controller, signed distance
method.

I. I NTRODUCTION

Fig. 1.

Autonomous Underwater vehicles are gaining importance

in commercial as well as military purposes. The AUVs
have six degree of freedom and are very difficult to control
because of the nonlinear model and coupled subsystems [1].
The presence of environmental disturbances namely ocean
currents, wind and wind generated waves makes the control
of such vehicles even more challenging [2]. Various attempts
have been made to control AUV, among them are PID [3],
[4], Neural Network [5], Sliding mode control [6], [7], fuzzy
control [8], [9] and recently fuzzy sliding mode control [10].
The decoupling of the AUV in three subsystems and use of
different controller for each subsystem was proposed by [11].
Although the intelligent control techniques are very
promising, their real time implementation for AUV is less
feasible because of the complex computations involved in
the decision making process. For example Fuzzy Logic Controller (FLC) require a computationally efficient processor
for fuzzification, rule base storage, inference mechanism and
defuzzification operations. The accuracy of the output can be
increased using larger set of rules but at the expense of longer
computational time. The full advantage of FLC can be taken
by reducing the computational complexity. This paper uses
single input fuzzy logic controller (SIFLC) for control of
AUV. SIFLC is a simplified form of conventional fuzzy logic
controller (CFLC). The usual inputs (error, change in error)
of a PD like CFLC are reduced to a single input (signed
distance) in SIFLC. Fuzzification, inference mechanism and
defuzzification are replaced with a control surface.

The six degrees of freedom

II. M ODELING OF AUV

The modeling of AUV in 6 degree-of-freedom (Fig. 1) is
done with respect two reference frames [12]. The position
(x, y, z) and orientation (roll angle , pitch angle and yaw
angle ) of AUV are described with respect to earth fixed
reference frame while the linear velocities ( surge u, sway v
and heave w) and angular velocities ( roll p, pitch q and yaw
r) are described with respect to body fixed reference frame.
The velocity vector and position and orientation vector
can be represented as,

[u, v, w, p, q, r]T

(1)

(2)

[x, y, z, , , ]

The mapping between the position and orientation and

velocities is given by Eulers angle transformation (Velocity
transformation) and is represented as [12],
= J()

(3)

The nonlinear dynamics of AUV are represented in a

compact form as:
M + C() + D() + g()

(4)

Where,
M is the 6 6 inertia matrix (including added mass)
C()
is the matrix of Coriolis and centripetal terms
(including added mass)
D() is the damping matrix
g() is the vector of gravitational forces and moments
is the vector of control inputs

*This work was not supported by any organization

1 Kunal Tiwari was student with Department of Instrumentation Engineering, SGGS Institute of Engineering and Technology, Nanded, India

kunal.n.tiwari@gmail.com
2 Vinayak G. Asutkar is Head of Department of Instrumentation Engineering at SGGS Institute of Engineering and Technology, Nanded, India

The simplified equations of motion in pure steering plane

is written by assuming the origin of body fixed frame to
coincide with center of gravity as:

vgasutkar@sggs.ac.in
3 Laxman

M. Waghmare is Director at SGGS Institute of Engineering and

Technology, Nanded, India lmwaghmare@yahoo.com

417

2015 Indian Control Conference

January 5-7, 2015. Chennai, India

m(v + mu0 r)
Izz r

(5)

(6)

The external forces and moments are expressed as :

X
Fext = Fhydrostatic + Flif t + Fdrag
+ Fcontrol + Fdisturbance (7)

Fig. 2.

The simplified version of equation 7 for the steering plane

(neglecting the quadratic damping coefficients because of
limited magnitude of and r) is written as [7],
X

= Yv v + Yr r + Yv v + Yr r + Yr r

(8)

= Nv v + Nr r + Nv v + Nr r + Nr r

(9)

CFLC input (r, e ) and output (r )membership function

TABLE I
T OEPLITZ RULE STRUCTURE

We consider surge speed as constant (u0 = 0.75m/s). For

small roll and pitch angle we have,

sin
cos
q+
r
cos
cos
r

(10)

The above equations are expressed in a matrix form as :

v
m Yv
Yr
0
Nv
Izz Nr 0 r
0
0
1

v
Yv Yr + mu0 0
Yr
Nr
0 r = Nr s
+ Nv

0
1
0
0

Figure 3 shows the block diagram for CFLC. The gains

Ge and Ge are the scaling factors for the input e and e
respectively. The output of the controller is obtained by
multiplying u0 (k) with the output scaling factor Gu . The
control surface for CFLC is given in Fig. 4.
(11)

Using value of the dimensions, hydrodynamic coefficient

and vehicle parameter of NPS AUV II for u0 = 0.75m/s
[7] we have,
x = A(t)x + B(t)u
(12)
Where,

Fig. 3.

x
A
B

Block diagram of conventional fuzzy logic controller


T
v r

0.1114 0.2647 0
= 0.0225 0.2331 0
0
1
0

T
= 0.0211 0.0258 0
=

u = s
III. C ONVENTIONAL F UZZY L OGIC C ONTROLLER
Conventional fuzzy logic controller (CFLC) is a linguistic
based controller that tries to emulate the human thinking
approach. The most commonly used CFLC is a PD like
fuzzy controller. The two input to the controller are the error
e and change in error e.
The inputs are fuzzified by the
input membership function. The input membership function
is selected heuristically and is based on the experience (Fig.
2). The rule table is created on a two dimensional space of
phase plane (e, e).
The rule table exhibits a Toeplitz structure.
Centroid method is mostly used for defuzzyfication [13].

Fig. 4.

418

CFLC: Control Surface

2015 Indian Control Conference

January 5-7, 2015. Chennai, India
TABLE II
R EDUCED RULE TABLE USING S IGNED DISTANCE METHOD
d
u 0

LN L
NL

LN M
NM

LN S
NS

LZ
Z

LP S
PS

LP M
PM

LP L
PL

IV. S INGLE I NPUT F UZZY L OGIC C ONTROLLER

In CFLC the two inputs are fuzzified. The number of rules
required p2 is dependent on the number of fuzzification level
p. The computational complexity of the fuzzy controller can
be reduced by analysis of the toeplitz structure of the rule
table. It can be observed that the output membership are
same in the diagonal direction (Table I). In addition to it the
magnitude of a point on diagonal line is in proportion to the
distance from the central diagonal line. This property of the
rule table is used to reduce the number of input from two
(e, e)
to a single input ( signed distance d) [14].
The distance d from point P(e1 , e 1 ) to Q(e0 , e 0 ) is calculated as [14],

Block Diagram of SIFLC with control surface C

TABLE III
C OMPARISON OF S IMULATION T IME

CFLC
SIFLC

Simulation Time (Sec)

2.788
0.488

V. S IMULATIONS AND R ESULTS

Figure 7 shows the yaw response for AUV steering using
CFLC. A step input of 25 deg for is given at zero
rudder deflection. The sway and yaw rate are small. A very
small rudder deflection is required for the control. The yaw
response and the rudder deflection for SIFLC (Fig. 8) are
comparable with the CFLC. Table III shows the comparison
of simulation time required for CFLC and SIFLC.

(13)

The rule table is reduced to one input (signed distance d)

(Table II). The diagonal lines from Table I now represent the
distance and the output membership is the constant value of
the point on the line. It can be observed that now only p
rules are to be inferred in contrast to p2 rules in CFLC.
The block diagram of SIFLC is as shown in Fig. 5. The
input (signed distance d) is calculated using (13). The final
output u(k)

is obtained by scaling u 0 (k) with Gu .

25

(deg)

20
r (deg/sec)

e + e
d=
1 + 2

Fig. 6.

15
10

0.4

0.2

5
0

50

100

150

50

100
time

150

200

50

100
time

150

200

time
0

0
1

1
1.5

Block Diagram of SIFLC scheme

2
0

The one dimensional rule table in SIFLC can be approximated to a piece wise linear(PWL) control surface under the
following conditions [8].
1) the input membership function is triangular shape
2) the output membership function is singleton shape
3) the fuzzification and defuzzification method uses center of gravity (CoG) method
The output equation under the above condition becomes
[8],
u 0 = d +
(14)

2
3
4

50

100
time

150

5
0

200

25

0.5

20

0.4
r (deg/sec)

(deg)

Fig. 7. CFLC : yaw response, yaw rate, sway velocity and rudder deflection

15
10
5
0

0.3
0.2
0.1

50

100
time

150

200

v (m/sec)

50

100
time

150

200

50

100
time

150

200

0
1

0.5

where is the slope of the line and is the output value

when input d is zero i.e. = u 0 d=0 . The variables
and are function of the peak value of the input and
output membership function.The PWL control surface can
be constructed using a simple lookup table. The resultant
block diagram of SIFLC with control surface is given in
Fig. 6.

2
1

Fig. 5.

r (deg)

v (m/sec)

0.5

3
1.5
2
0

4
50

100
time

150

200

5
0

Fig. 8. SIFLC : yaw response, yaw rate, sway velocity and rudder deflection

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2015 Indian Control Conference

January 5-7, 2015. Chennai, India

VI. C ONCLUSION
A very efficient conventional fuzzy logic controller
(CFLC) design was described in the paper. The control
energy require by the controller is very small. The sway
velocity and yaw rate were small. The CFLC was then
reduced into a computationally simpler single input fuzzy
logic controller (SIFLC). The reduction was brought about
by introduction of a new variable known as signed distance.
The results of the SIFLC were comparable to the CFLC. The
computational time required for simulation of SIFLC was
very less as compared to CFLC. The structure of SIFLC can
be implemented using a low cost device.
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