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In this paper, a disturbance observer based nonsingular fast terminal sliding mode control (NFTSMC) scheme is proposed for the trajectory tracking control of an underactuated autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV). A nonlinear disturbance observer (DO) is designed to estimate complex external disturbances and incorporated into a NFTSMC. In constructing sliding surfaces, the parameter selection in the exponential terms in NFTSMC is expanded. Lyapunov's second method proves the uniformly ultimately bounded stability of the proposed DO based NFTSMC. Simulation is performed to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed controller. Compared with the existing NTSMC methods, the convergence rate is improved by the proposed NFTSMC. Moreover, the proposed controller has good robustness to smooth external disturbances. For random disturbances along with an impulse at some time, the proposed controller can also track the disturbance well and achieve good robustness. • An improved sliding surface is proposed to deal with the finite selection problem of exponential parameters. • The unknown time-varying disturbances are estimated by disturbance observer and compensated in the control laws. • Compared with the existing NTSMC methods, proposed control strategy realizes faster and accurate tracking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, a finite-time extended state observer-based nonsingular fast terminal sliding mode control (NFTSMC) is proposed for the trajectory tracking of autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) with various hydrodynamic uncertainties and external disturbances. First, a proportional–integral velocity variable based third-order fast finite-time extended state observer is designed to estimate the lumped uncertainties and their first derivatives. The concepts of finite-time stability and a new proposition are utilized to prove the finite-time uniformly ultimately boundness of the proposed observer. Then, based on the disturbance estimation, an NFTSMC is developed for AUVs. The inverse tangent function and linear control term are used to provide robustness against estimation error and avoid chattering in the thrusters. The position and attitude trajectories are proved to be fast finite-time stable via the Lyapunov theorem. To verify the theoretical analysis, comparative numerical simulations are provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed control scheme. • A novel FFTESO is developed to accurately estimate the disturbances. • FFTESO-based NFTSMC scheme is designed to achieve the desired trajectory tracking. • The finite-time stability of the proposed scheme can be guaranteed. • The proposed control scheme ensures fast convergence and less chattering. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]