This paper presents the design and experimental implementation of an L 1 adaptive control on a tethered underwater vehicle. This controller, well known for its fast adaptation and its robusntess, is proposed to be applied for the first time in the field of underwater vehicles control. This paper summarizes the implementation and experimental results obtained on a modified version of the AC-ROV underwater vehicle. Various experimental scenarios are presented to illustrate the ability of the L 1 adaptive law not only to successfully control pitch and depth (even with strong modeling uncertainties), but also to be efficient towards disturbances like waves or buoyancy changes.

This paper deals with an experimental comparison between a proportional derivative (PD) controller and an adaptive nonlinear state feedback one, both applied on a tethered autonomous underwater vehicle. The aim is to show the behavior of the closed loop system in the nominal case for each of these two controllers, and then to test their robustness towards some parameters changes. The PD on one hand has a good performance for systems with an unknown model. The adaptive control law on the other hand is known to adjust the unknown parameters of the plant in order to converge to the desired trajectory. This study shows experimental results performed using each of the above mentioned control laws.