Automatica 40 (2004) 1525 – 1531

www.elsevier.com/locate/automatica

Brief paper
Output-feedback control of an underwater vehicle prototype by
higher-order sliding modes

Alessandro Pisano∗ , Elio Usai
University of Cagliari, Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering (DIEE), Piazza d’Armi, Cagliari 09123, Italy
Received 15 April 2003; received in revised form 17 February 2004; accepted 24 March 2004

Abstract

This paper describes some experimental results concerning the practical implementation of a recently proposed nonlinear output-feedback
control technique based on the higher-order sliding mode approach. The considered technique is applied to the motion control problem for
an underwater vehicle prototype that is equipped with a special propulsion system based on hydro-jets with variable-section nozzles. To
cope with the heavy uncertainties a4ecting the prototype dynamics the output-feedback control system has been developed by means of
an observer-controller that combines a second-order sliding-mode controller and a second-order sliding-mode di4erentiator. The reported
experiments show that the proposed approach is capable of guaranteeing fast and accurate response under several operating conditions.
The control system design procedure, and the main implementation issues, are discussed in detail.
? 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Second-order sliding-modes; Underwater vehicles; Output–feedback; Nonlinear uncertain systems; Di4erentiators

1. Introduction
This paper details some experiments concerning the mo-
tion control of an underwater vehicle (UV) prototype built
and developed at the Department of Electrical and Elec-
tronic Engineering (DIEE) of the Cagliari University. The
considered UV is equipped with a special water-jet propul-
sion system. Because of both the system realization and the
operating conditions its dynamics is a4ected by various un-
certainties that should be taken into account in the controller
design.
A popular approach to nonlinear output-feedback con-
trol design under “heavy” uncertainty conditions entails the
combined use of Lyapunov-based controllers and high-gain
observers (HGOs) to estimate the output derivatives (Teel
& Praly, 1995; Atassi & Khalil, 1999). Under the hypoth-
esis that a stabilizing state-feedback control is available, it

This paper was presented at the IFAC Workshop on Robust Control
Design, ROCOND ’03, Milan, June 2003. This paper was recommended
for publication in revised form by Associate Editor Keum-Shik Hong
under the direction of Editor Mituhiko Araki.
∗ Corresponding author. Tel.: +39-0706-755760;
was shown in Atassi and Khalil (1999) that using an HGO
one can recover the performance achieved under state feed-
back, thus a rather general nonlinear separation principle
was established there.
Nevertheless, in real implementation real-time
di4erentiators based on high-gain observers can be rather
sensitive to the measurement noise a4ecting the output
variable. Robust di4erentiators based on the second-order
sliding mode control approach (see Levant, 1998; Bartolini,
Pisano, & Usai, 2001b), exhibit interesting properties of
robustness with respect to the measurement noise.
This work validates the theoretical results reported in
Bartolini, Levant, Pisano and Usai (2000); Levant (2003)
and addresses the relevant practical implementation issues.
In the above works stability and separation results about
the combined use of second-order sliding-mode controllers
(2-SMC) (Bartolini, Ferrara, Levant, & Usai, 1999) and
second-order sliding-mode di4erentiators (2-SMD) (Levant,
1998) were dealt with.
The paper is organized as follows: in Section 2, we brieKy
recall the basic design principles of output-feedback 2-SM

fax: +39-0706-755782.
control. In Section 3, a mathematical model of the UV
E-mail addresses: pisano@diee.unica.it (A. Pisano), dynamics is given, and in the successive Section 4, the
eusai@diee.unica.it (E. Usai). combined 2-SMC/2-SMD approach is applied to design a

0005-1098/$ - see front matter ? 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.automatica.2004.03.016
1526 A. Pisano, E. Usai / Automatica 40 (2004) 1525 – 1531

robust output-feedback motion controller for the UV pro- Levant, Pisano, & Usai, 2002; Bartolini, Pisano, Punta, &
totype. Section 5 describes the experimental setup and dis- Usai 2003; Levant, 2003) and can be characterized by a
cusses the experimental results, and Section 6 draws some three-step procedure:
Mnal conclusions. Step 1: Sliding manifold design.
The sliding variable is expressed as follows:
r−2


2. Nonlinear output-feedback control via 2-SM  = e(r−1) + ci e(i) ; e(0) = e; (6)
controllers and SM dierentiators i=0

where the coePcients ci (i = 0; 2; : : :

; r − 2) are chosen such
Consider the nonlinear SISO system r−2
that the polynomial P() = r−1 + i=0 ci i is an Hurwitz
ẋ = f(x) + g(x)u; one.
Step 2: Estimation of the sliding variable.
y = h(x) (1) The error derivatives are not available and must be eval-
n
uated by means of some accurate real-time device robust
with unavailable state vector x ∈ R , scalar control variable against the measurement noise and possibly Mnite-time con-
u ∈ R and measurable output y ∈ R. Let f, g and h be un- verging. Recently proposed (Levant, 2003), the arbitrary-
known, suPciently smooth, vector-Melds of appropriate di- order di4erentiator based on higher-order sliding modes
mension satisfying proper growth constraints to be speciMed. appears to be an e4ective, yet robust, solution.
The heavy uncertainty of the system prevents immediate re- If the input/output relative degree is r = 2, only the Mrst
duction of (1) to any normal form by means of standard derivative of e needs to be estimated, and the arbitrary-order
approaches based on the knowledge of f, g and h. di4erentiator in Levant (2003) reduces to the Mrst-order dif-
If conditions Lg Lf h(x)=Lg L2f h(x)=· · ·=Lg Lfr−2 h(x)=0 ferentiator (Levant, 1998):
and Lg Lfr−1 h(x) = 0 hold globally then system (1) possesses
a globally-deMned relative degree r (Isidori, 1995) (Lg ; Lf (t) = q0 (t) − e(t);
denote the Lie derivatives), and the input–output dynamics
q̇0 (t) = q1 (t) − 0 |(t)|1=2 sign((t));
can be reduced to
y(r) = Lrf h(x) + Lg Lfr−1 h(x)u: (2) q̇1 (t) = −1 sign((t)): (7)
The tuning conditions are
Let =[y; ẏ; : : : ; y(r−1) ]T , then it is always possible (Isidori,
1995) to deMne a vector  ∈ Rn−r such that the map 1 + C 2
1 ¿ C2 ; 02 ¿ 4C2 ; (8)
1 − C 2
x = ( ; ) (3) where C2 is a Lipschitz constant of the error derivative ė.
n
is a di4eomorMsm on R and the  dynamics, which are If r ¿ 2 one could implement a cascade of di4erentia-
referred to as the “internal dynamics” (Isidori, 1995), can tors (7) to estimate the higher-order derivatives. However,
be expressed as follows: by performing a noise propagation analysis it results that
the higher-order di4erentiator presented in Levant (2003),
˙ = q( ; ): (4) specially designed for multiple di4erentiation task, is more
If r = n there are no internal dynamics and the system is e4ective.
said to be “fully linearizable” (Isidori, 1995). Assume what Step 3: Stabilization of the sliding variable.
follows: Consider the nonlinear uncertain second-order sliding
variable dynamics
Assumption 1. The internal dynamics (4) are input-to-state S = ’( ; R ; ; u) + ( ; )u̇; (9)
stable (ISS).
where R = [yR ; ẏ R ; : : : ; yR(r−1) ]T .
Assumption 2. The drift term, Lrf h(x),
and the control gain, From Assumption 2, taking into account that vector R is
norm-bounded, it can be concluded that the so-called “equiv-
Lg Lfr−1 h(x), of the input–output dynamics (2) are globally
alent control” (Utkin, 1992) is bounded. Thus, as long as the
bounded and Lipschitz.
closed-loop system evolves within a (possibly large) com-
pact domain containing the 2-sliding manifold  = ˙ = 0,
Let yR be a desired smooth output response, deMne the
the following additional assumption can be met.
tracking error as e =y −yR and consider the associated error
dynamics
Assumption 3. Three positive constants F, 1 , 2 can be
e(r) = Lrf h(x) − yR(r) + Lg Lfr−1 h(x)u: (5) found such that the uncertainties ’ and  satisfy the follow-
ing boundedness conditions:
The output-feedback control problem with higher-order slid-
ing modes has been dealt with in recent works (Bartolini, |’| 6 F; 0 ¡ 1 66 2: (10)
 A. Pisano, E. Usai / Automatica 40 (2004) 1525 – 1531 1527

Conditions (10), which hold locally, constitute a par- Variable-section

ticular case of more general state-dependent bounds for nozzles
the uncertain sliding variable dynamics (Bartolini, Fer-
Hydraulic pipe
rara, Pisano, & Usai, 2001a), and allow for a particularly
simple constant-parameters realization of the so-called
“Sub-optimal” 2-SMC algorithm (Bartolini, Ferrara,
Levant, & Usai, 1999):
Sub-optimal algorithm
u(0) = 0


 −UM sign((t) − 12 (0)); 0 6 t ¡ tM1 ;

u̇(t) = −$(t)UM sign((t) tMi 6 t ¡ tMi+1 ;


 1
− 2 (tMi )); i = 1; 2; : : :
(11)
Linear motor Pump
 ∗ 1 drives
$ ; (tMi )((t) − 2 (tMi )) 6 0;
$(t) = Fig. 1. The UV prototype.
1; (tMi )((t) − 12 (tMi )) ¿ 0;
(12)
where tMi (i = 1; 2; : : :) is the sequence of the time instants at
which =0,
˙ and parameters UM and $∗ are chosen according
to the tuning rules
2
$∗ ¿ ; (13)
3 1

4F F
UM ¿ max ; : (14)
3$∗ 1− 2 1

The above control law steers both  and ˙ to zero in a Mnite

time (Bartolini et al., 1999, 2001a). The reader is referred to
(Bartolini et al., 2000; Levant, 2003) for details regarding
the separation principle establishing the closed-loop stability
of the above combined 2-SMC/2-SMD scheme.

Remark 1. Since ˙ is not known the sequence tMi is un-

available, but can be approximately detected using only
sampled measurements of  carried out at the time instants
tk = k& (k = 0; 1; : : :) (Bartolini et al., 2001a). It has been
shown that the resulting approximate implementation of
the controller guarantees the reaching of an O(&2 ) bound-
ary layer of the sliding manifold  = 0 (Bartolini et al.,
2001a, b).
3. An UV prototype with a jet-based propulsion system
An UV prototype has been recently built at the
DIEE-University of Cagliari as a preliminary test-bed of a
novel water-jet-based propulsion system for underwater ve-
hicles. The vehicle is about 150 cm long and 80 cm high. It
contains a centrifugal pump feeding an hydraulic pipe and
two variable-section nozzles, actuated by means of linear
motor drives, located at the opposite ends of the hydraulic
circuit (Fig. 1).
The prototype is rigidly connected with a wheeled trol-
ley that “suspends” the UV into a water channel (Fig. 2).
Fig. 2. The UV prototype in the water channel.
This conMguration allows the UV to move freely along the
channel under the reaction force exerted by the water Kow
through the nozzles.
The nozzle output sections can be adjusted by moving the
corresponding spear valve, directly coupled with a linear
electric drive. The spear valve proMle is similar to that in a
Pelton turbine, so that the generated thrust is turbulence-free
and almost-linearly dependent on the valve position.
Fig. 3 shows the hydro-jets in two di4erent opening condi-
tions of the nozzle. The direct mechanical coupling between
the valve and the motor, and the large bandwidth of the
latter, allow for a very fast control of thrust proMle.
3.1. The UV model
The dynamics of the considered jet-propelled UV can be
formulated as follows (Fossen, 1994):
(Mv + Ma )yS + k1 ẏ|ẏ| + k2 ẏ + d(t) = F1 (t) − F2 (t); (15)
1528 A. Pisano, E. Usai / Automatica 40 (2004) 1525 – 1531

Almost-closed nozzle Almost-open nozzle Desired Command

UV position LM position
Vehicle Linear motor
+ controller + controllers
– –
Actual
UV position
Actual LM position

Actual UV position

Fig. 5. A schematic representation of the control architecture.

Fig. 3. The water jets with open and closed nozzle.

z1 and z2 is r = 2 and the above outlined design procedure
yields the following steps.
Sliding manifold design. According to (6), the sliding
z1(t) variable is deMned as
slider
Directly-coupled
(t) = ė(t) + ce(t); c ¿ 0: (18)
linear motor drive
Estimation of the sliding variable. The actual vehicle ve-
locity error ė is estimated in real-time by means of the di4er-
spear valve entiator (7), with the parameters 0 and 1 set on the basis
Fig. 4. Nozzle position notation.
of (8) with C2 suPciently large so that condition |e| S 6 C2
is met.
Stabilization of the sliding variable. A desired proMle
where y(t) is the vehicle position, Mv is the vehicle mass, for the spear-valves coordinates z1 and z2 is deMned so that
Ma represents the added mass e4ect, k1 and k2 are the viscous the sliding variable  is reduced to zero in Mnite time. The
friction and drag coePcients, d(t) accounts for the external Mrst-order dynamics of the sliding variable can be repre-
disturbances (e.g. currents, border e4ects) and F1 (t), F2 (t) sented by the following di4erential equation:
are the control thrusts exerted on the UV by the two opposite
˙ = f(ẏ; t) − yS R + cė(t) + gA(z1 ; z2 ); (19)
jets.
With a good approximation it can be assumed that F1 (t) where
and F2 (t) depend instantaneously on the positions, z1 and
A(z1 ; z2 ) = h(z1 ) − h(z2 ): (20)
z2 , of the spear valves (Fig. 4) by a nonlinear function h
To minimize the energy consumption, the two nozzles
F1 = h(z1 ); F2 = h(z2 ): (16)
should not be both opened at the same time. This corresponds
The positions of the two spear valves are deMned accord- to keep either z1 or z2 to zero at each time instant. DeMne
ing to the notation represented in Fig. 4: z1 (z2 ) is zero when the dummy control variable
the nozzle is closed and increases while the spear valve is
+z = z1 − z2 (21)
opening. Thus, z1 and z2 remain always nonnegative.
Function h is quite diPcult to determine, and therefore it subjected to the aforementioned constraints
is considered uncertain in the present treatment. Obviously h
z1 ¿ 0; z2 ¿ 0; z1 · z2 = 0: (22)
is strictly positive, monotonically increasing and zero when
its argument is zero. By (21) and (22), Eq. (20) reduces to
The system parameters Mv , Ma , k1 , k2 as well as the dis- 
h(+z ); +z ¿ 0;
turbance d(t) are unknown. Collecting the uncertainties af- A ≡ A(+z ) = (23)
fecting the UV dynamics, system (15) can be rearranged as −h(−+z ); +z ¡ 0:
follows: Di4erentiating (19) and considering (20)–(23) one
yS = f(ẏ; t) + g[h(z1 ) − h(z2 )]; (17) obtains
dA
where g = 1=(Ma + Mv ) and with implicit deMnition of S = ’(y; ẏ; +z ; t) + g +̇z : (24)
d+z
function f(ẏ; t).
Thanks to the imposed constraints (22), dynamics (24)
is formally equivalent to (9) with u = +z . By analyzing the
4. Controller design physical structure of the system, it can be asserted that func-
tion ’ is bounded and A(+z ) is strictly increasing, then con-
Let yR be a smooth reference proMle for the vehicle po- ditions (10) hold for some constants F, 1 and 2 .
sition and let e be the tracking error. By (17), the relative A cascade compensation scheme is employed for the
degree between the position error e and the control variables control system (Fig. 5): the “high-level” vehicle controller
 A. Pisano, E. Usai / Automatica 40 (2004) 1525 – 1531
25
20
15
[cm]
10
5 5
0 0
0 10 20 30
Time [sec]
Fig. 6. The actual and desired position proMle with 2-SMC (left) and PID-control (right).
drives each LM controller with a reference proMle for the
LM position.
Given a command proMle +zR for +z , the desired proMles
z1R and z2R for the spear valve positions are obtained by
inverting (21) under conditions (22):
z1R = max{+zR ; 0};
z2R = −min{+zR ; 0}:
The inner loop in Fig. 5 might cause the actual proMles
of z1 and z2 to be largely di4erent from the prescribed ones
z1R and z2R . Nevertheless, considering the large bandwidth
of the LM drive control system (over 15 Hz) and the con-
siderable inertia of the UV it is possible to regard the LM
dynamics as a singular perturbation suPciently fast to pre-
serve the sliding mode stability (Fridman, 2003). The ro-
bustness against fast unmodeled dynamics is indeed one of
the most important features of the SMC approach as far as
the practical implementation issues are dealt with.
Let us summarize the overall controller. The sliding
manifold is
ˆ = ėˆ + ce;
(t) c ¿ 0;
where e = y − yR and ėˆ is computed by using di4erentia-
tor (7). The reference position proMles for the linear motors
are set according to (25), where +̇zR is a discontinuous sig-
nal deMned according to the Sub-optimal 2-SMC algorithm
(11)–(14).
By relying on the separation principle demonstrated in
Bartolini et al. (2000), and taking into account the actual
implementation e4ects like noise (Levant, 2000) and dis-
cretization (Bartolini et al., 2001b), it can be asserted that
the following conditions are simultaneously fulMlled after a
Mnite time:
|ėˆ − ė| = 1 ;
||
ˆ = 2
with 1 ; 2 ≈ 0. The exponential convergence of e toward a
small neighbor of zero follows from trivial arguments.
1529
25
20
15
[cm]
10
40 0 10 20 30 40
Time [sec]
5. The experimental setup: implementation issues and
test results
The linear motor drives (by Linmot TM ) have a rated
bandwidth between 15 Hz and 20 Hz. A dedicated driver
module allows for setting the force w applied to the slider by
(25) means of a reference input wR (the force-loop is embedded
in the driver module). Furthermore, the driver module gives
the slider positions y1 and y2 as incremental encoder-like
signals, and a PID position-force loop has been closed
externally to the LM controller.
The control system has been implemented on a PC-based
platform (Pentium2 processor at 350 Mhz). The computa-
tional burden of the control system is limited, and much
less computing power would be suPcient. Discretization has
been performed by the classical backward-di4erence method
with a sampling step of 2 ms (the sample-and-hold e4ect
was analyzed in Bartolini et al. (2001b)). The parameters of
the controller and of the di4erentiator are: UM = 10, $∗ = 1
(Sub-optimal 2-SMC), 0 = 12, 1 = 20 (2-SMD).
The performance of the proposed 2-SM controller/observer
scheme with the above parameter set has been compared
(26)
with that of a classical PID controller with gains KP = 2,
KI = KD = 1.
In a Mrst test a piece-wise constant reference position was
used. Fig. 6 reports the actual and desired trajectory obtained
using the two di4erent approaches, and evidences that the
VSC is more accurate. Fig. 7 (left) shows the time evolu-
tion of the sliding variable, while Fig. 7 (right) reports the
discontinous signal +̇∗z . Fig. 8 reports the actual and desired
position of the two linear motors. It can be seen that the two
nozzles are never both opened at the same time instant.
A tracking test using a sinusoidal reference proMle has
been also carried out. Fig. 9 shows that the actual trajectory
converges to the desired one after a very short transient.
(27)
(28) 6. Conclusions
This paper dealt with the 2-SMC approach to the
output-feedback control problem for nonlinear uncertain
1530 A. Pisano, E. Usai / Automatica 40 (2004) 1525 – 1531

10 20
15
5 10
5

[cm s-1]

[cm s-1]
0 0
-5
-5 -10
-15
-10 -20
0 10 20 30 40 0 10 20 30 40
Time [sec] Time [sec]

Fig. 7. The sliding variable time history (left) and the discontinuous signal +̇zR (t) (right) in the regulation test.

5 5

4 4

3 3

[mm]
[mm]

2 2

1 1

0 0

-1 -1
0 10 20 30 40 0 10 20 30 40
Time [sec] Time [sec]

Fig. 8. The actual and desired position proMles for the two linear motors in the regulation test with 2-SMC. Left plot: motor n. 1. Right plot: motor n. 2.

10 platform. Experiments pointed out the good performance

and robustness of the proposed controller, and, in particu-
lar, an improvement of accuracy with respect to a classical
5
PID controller.

Acknowledgements
[cm]

Partially supported by the MIUR (former MURST)

project “Navigation, Guidance and Control for Underwater
-5 Vehicles”.

-10
0 10 20 30
Time [sec]
Fig. 9. The actual and desired position proMles in the tracking test with
2-SMC.
systems. A challenging application is considered: the motion
control for a jet-propelled underwater-vehicle prototype by
output feedback. Because of the heavy system uncertainties,
it is sensible to use an observer/controller scheme based on
second-order sliding modes. Its mild computational load al-
lows for the digital implementation on a low-cost hardware
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Alessandro Pisano was born in Sas-
sari, Italy, in 1972. He graduated in
Electronic Engineering in 1997 at the
Department of Electrical and Electronic
Engineering (DIEE) of the Cagliari Uni-
versity (Italy), where he received the
Ph.D. degree in Electronics and Com-
puter Science in 2000. He is currently a
research associate at DIEE. His current
research interest include nonlinear and
robust control, variable-structure systems
and sliding-mode control implementa-
tion in mechanical and electromechanical systems.
Elio Usai was born in Sassari, Italy, in 1960.
He graduated in Electrical Engineering at the
University of Cagliari, Italy, in 1985. Up to
1994 he has been working for international
industrial companies. Since 1994 he is at
the Department of Electrical and Electronic
Engineering (DIEE), University of Cagliari,
where currently he is associate professor of
automatic control. Current research interests
are in the Meld of control engineering, vari-
able structure systems, optimal control and
modeling. He is a member of IEEE and of
the Associazione Elettrotecnica ed Elettronica Italiana.