Proceedings of The Fifteenth (2005) International Offshore and Polar Engineering Conference Seoul, Korea, June 1924, 2005

Copyright 2005 by The International Society of Offshore and Polar Engineers ISBN 1-880653-64-8 (Set); ISSN 1098-6189 (Set)

Fast On-line Neuro-fuzzy Controller for Autonomous Underwater Vehicles

Tae Won Kim and J. Yuh
Autonomous Systems Lab. Dept. of Mechanical Eng., University of Hawaii Honolulu, HI, U.S.A.

ABSTRACT
This paper describes a fast on-line neuro-fuzzy controller for underwater robots of which the dynamics are highly nonlinear, coupled, and time-varying. The neuro-fuzzy controller is based on the Fuzzy Membership Function Neural Network (FMFNN) with varying learning rate. Even though FMFNN has advantages of fuzzy logic and neural networks, it is not so easy to decide initial rules for fuzzy inference part and learning rates for neural network part. These two factors affect controller performance so much. There are many research results about how to decide or modify fuzzy rules. However learning rate was not an issue in neuro-fuzzy controller. Thus, in this paper, varying learning rate is applied to FMFNN by considering system error. To show the validity of varying learning rate method, simulation results of FMFNN with varying learning rate are presented with underwater robot control example.

Network (FMFNN) showed good performance for nonlinear dynamic system, such as AUVs, without a prior knowledge of nonlinear dynamic system (Kim, 2002). It combined advantages of fuzzy logics and neural network such as adoptability of the human operators experience, inference capability for unknown situations using given knowledge, universal approximation, and learning capability. Even though parameter converging speed of FMFNN-based neurofuzzy controller is faster than that of neural network-based controller, it still needs several times of learning iterations. In case of actual implementation, it is not so easy to keep the same condition/environment during learning phase. Thus fast on-line learning is desirable for dynamically varying system/environment. There are two ways to reduce learning trials; set proper fuzzy rules and values according to experts or human experience, and decide optimal learning rate to get fast learning speed. The first way, proper fuzzy rules and values, is sometimes hard to be implemented in case of lack of knowledge about the system. Especially, in AUV control, learning system characteristics takes long time because of nonlinear timevarying dynamics. However, some examples showed self-organizing fuzzy rules by using neural network were working well (Wang, 2003). The second way, optimal learning rate, was not a hot issue in neurofuzzy controller, because several iterations to learn system dynamics are not a big deal in most application. However, in case of AUV control, it is desirable to have fast parameter converging characteristics to adapt the controller for unknown time-varying dynamic system and/or environment. This paper describes neruo-fuzzy controller with a varying learning rate for fast on-line learning. Section 2 describes basic concept of FMFNN controller and how to change learning rate according to error. Effectiveness of the varying learning rate FMFNN controller is compared with modified FMFNN by computer simulation in Section 3, before the conclusions in Section 4.

KEY WORDS: FMFNN; neuro-fuzzy controller; AUV;

learning rate.

INTRODUCTION
Autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) are well known as a complex dynamic system that is highly nonlinear, coupled, and timevarying (Yuh, 2000). Various advanced underwater robot control system have been developed, such as sliding control (Healey, 1993 and Yoerger, 1993), nonlinear control (Nakamura, 1992), adaptive control (Nie, 1998, and Yuh, 1990b), neural network (Ishiii, 1998, and Yuh, 1990a), fuzzy control (DeBitetto, 1994, and Kato, 1995) and neurofuzzy control (Wang, 2003, and, Kim, 1992). Most controllers are focused on self-tuning or self-organizing when the control performance degrades during the operation due to model uncertainties and changes in the vehicle system and its environment. Among them, on-line neuro-fuzzy controller based on Fuzzy Membership Function Neural

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