Chattering suppression and hydrodynamic disturbance estimation of underwater manipulators using adaptive fuzzy sliding mode control

Robotic manipulators are nowadays widely used in various underwater scenarios, but their motion control remains a challenging task due to hydrodynamic effects. This article proposes a novel adaptive fuzzy sliding mode control (AFSMC) strategy for precise and robust control of underwater manipulators. To simulate the movement of the robotic manipulators in the underwater environment, the Unified Robot Description Format (URDF) file of a custom-designed electric underwater manipulator is imported into the Simscape Multibody and the hydrodynamic disturbance is modeled according to Morison’s equation. Furthermore, the proposed control strategy takes advantage of the universal approximation capability of fuzzy systems to avoid chattering and observe disturbances by adjusting the control gains of classical sliding mode control (CSMC). And adaptive laws are designed to update the parameters of the fuzzy systems. The strong friction caused by the seal is also compensated by actual test data. In the simulation experiments, a special environment of water flow and variable loads is considered. The results demonstrate that the AFSMC strategy can achieve high precision and strong robustness against disturbances for trajectory tracking. More importantly, the chattering caused by CSMC can be eliminated and the hydrodynamic disturbance can be estimated with high precision through the proposed control strategy.