Marine and underwater robotics

The great effort devoted to marine and underwater robotics in the last decades is fully justified by the scientific, economical and environmental impact of underwater applications as global climate prediction, deep sea exploration, ocean cable inspectance, earthquake prediction, understanding life in remote areas.

Among the many open issues related to the design of autonomous marine systems, one is their motion control. Indeed the hydrodynamic model of marine vehicles is nonlinear, coupled and often underactuated. As a consequence the design of guidance and control laws to achieve pose regulation or path following for either surface or underwater system is challenging.