J. Marine Sci. Appl.
(2015) 14: 14-24
DOI: 10.1007/s11804-015-1297-7
Virtual Reality Simulation of Fuzzy-logic Control during
Underwater Dynamic Positioning
Midhin Das Thekkedan1, Cheng Siong Chin1* and Wai Lok Woo2
1. School of Marine Science and Technology, Newcastle University, NE1 7RU, United Kingdom
2. School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Newcastle University, NE1 7RU, United Kingdom
Abstract: In this paper, graphical-user-interface (GUI) software for
simulation and fuzzy-logic control of a remotely operated vehicle
(ROV) using MATLABTM GUI Designing Environment is
proposed. The proposed ROV’s GUI platform allows the controller
such as fuzzy-logic control systems design to be compared with
other controllers such as proportional-integral-derivative (PID) and
sliding-mode controller (SMC) systematically and interactively.
External disturbance such as sea current can be added to improve
the modelling in actual underwater environment. The simulated
results showed the position responses of the fuzzy-logic control
exhibit reasonable performance under the sea current disturbance.
Keywords: graphical-user-interface (GUI); fuzzy-logic control;
remotely operated vehicle (ROV); proportional-integral-derivative
(PID); sliding-mode controller (SMC); underwater dynamic
positioning
Article ID: 1671-9433(2015)01-0014-11
1 Introduction1
In the last few decades, the use of underwater robotic
vehicles (URV) (Fossen, 1994; Yuh, 2000) has experienced
tremendous growth. Many are used for underwater
inspection of sub-sea cables, oil and gas installations like
Christmas trees, structures and pipelines. They are essential
at depths where the use of human divers is impractical.
Generally, the URV can be broadly classified as
remotely-operated vehicle (ROV) and autonomous
underwater vehicle (AUV), depending on their designed
tasks and modes of operations. Nevertheless, ROV are best
suited for work that involves operating from a stationary
point or cruising at relatively slow speeds for inspection
tasks. Furthermore, for any tasks involving manipulation
and requiring maneuverability, they are the most
cost-effective platform.
But deployments of the ROV present several difficulties
as they are difficult to control remotely. The challenges are
as follows. The governing dynamics of underwater vehicles
are well understood, but they are difficult to handle for
practical design and control purposes (Juan and Julio, 2011;
Received date: 2014-09-11.
Accepted date: 2014-11-17.
Foundation item: Supported by the Newcastle University’s Project
Account: C0570D2330.
*Corresponding author Email: cheng.chin@ncl.ac.uk
© Harbin Engineering University and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2015
Caccia et al., 2000). The problem includes its inherent
nonlinearities and modelling uncertainties of the ROV.
Much hydrodynamic and inertial nonlinearity are present
due to the coupling between degrees of freedom. This is due
to the fact that the ROV is asymmetry-shaped by design
(Chin and Lau, 2012; Si and Chin, 2014; Chin et al., 2011;
Chin and Lum, 2011; Chin et al., 2006; 2008) and sensors
are attached to its open-frame structure as compared to its
counterpart, AUV that is more streamlined for faster
maneuvering. Besides, the external disturbances such as sea
current and other uncertainties acting on the ROV affect the
control.
Hence, it is important to numerically model and simulate
the ROV’s dynamics and the external disturbance. This is
crucial to the realization of ROV’s simulators, precision
autopilots and for prediction of performance (Juan et al.,
2013; Smallwood and Whitcomb, 2001). However, the
modelling, simulation and control of the ROV is fairly
difficult and challenging. This spurs some research interests
in performing the simulation and control analysis on the
ROV’s model before actual deployment. But it is not always
possible to obtain an accurate ROV’s model due to the
uncertainties when ROV works in underwater. Many
different types of control system methods (Corradini et al.,
2011; Souza and Maruyama, 2007; Li et al., 2005; Chin and
Lum, 2011) were designed to solve the problem of
uncertainty, dynamic positioning and trajectory tracking of
the ROV. The proportional-integral-derivative (PID)
controller is the most common used controller. Recently,
anew backstepping tracking control (Sun et al., 2014a) was
proposed for an unmanned submarine vehicle. The
simulation results showed the feasibility of the cascaded
control using sliding mode and bioinspired filter design to
handle the speed-jump problem. In addition, fuzzy logic
control (FLC) was introduced (Zadeh, 1965), and had
spurred many control applications on underwater robot
(Ollennu and White, 1996; Raimondi and Melluso, 2010;
Guo et al., 2003; Gracanin et al., 1999; Ishaque et al., 2011;
Akkizidis et al., 2007). Lately, a novel fuzzy control method
(Sun et al., 2014b) is presented for an AUV in both static
and dynamic three-dimensional environment to avoid
dynamic obstacles. The simulation results showed the
effectiveness of the proposed approach for navigation. The
Journalof Marine Science and Application (2015) 14: 14-24
merit of using the fuzzy logic is the dynamics of the
controlled system need not be known. However, to obtain
the position and velocity responses of the ROV model using
the FLC, numerical simulation software with some
virtualisation is required.
To the best of our knowledge, there exists some software
for the URV simulation. The VROV simulator was designed
and developed by GRI Simulations Inc. as an instructional
tool for ROV pilot training programs. It could be used for
real-time dynamic simulation of ROV motion and
simulation of tethered and un-tethered ROV and AUV
hardware. Software named AUVSim designed by
H-Scientific Inc is used to simulate the behavior of an
underwater vehicle, such as the AUV and ROV. AUVSim
was developed to aid the process of designing and
optimizing the control system for AUV and ROV. Besides,
SubSim software for AUVs and contains a complete 3D
physics simulation at a much lower level than the driving
simulator. Lastly, the Marine Systems Simulator (MSS)
software was developed at the Norwegian University of
Science and Technology (NTNU). The Marine Systems
Simulator (MSS) is an environment which provides the
necessary resources for rapid implementation of
mathematical models of marine systems with focus on
control system design for vessels. The simulator has
different models for vessels and provides examples ready to
simulate different floating structures. The platform adopted
for the development of MSS is MATLABTM and SimulinkTM.
The software allows a modular simulator structure, and the
possibility of distributed development. But the software is
mainly for marine vessels and may not be suitable for
submerged vehicles such as ROV. Moreover, a user
interactive platform for simulating and animating a ROV’s
control system is not readily available.
Thus the main goal of this paper targets on the simulation
and FLC systems simulation and animation for an
inspection class ROV called Falcon ROV (Soylu et al.,
2010). A mathematical model of the ROV was coded using
the MATLABTM and SimulinkTM. The hydrodynamic
parameters were obtained from the published experimental
results of Falcon ROV. A three-dimensional (3D) animation
of the ROV, to visualise the ROV dynamics, was developed
using Virtual Reality Modelling Language (VRML) editor
and 3D animation toolbox of SimulinkTM. All these
components will be integrated in a MATLABTM GUI
Designing Environment (GUIDE) to form a commercially
applicable dynamic positioning simulator to visualise the
dynamic positioning of the ROV in 3D virtual reality
environment. Besides, an advanced controller such as
sliding mode controller (SMC) (Fossen, 1994), and the
intuitive controller like PID (Fossen, 1994) on the ROV
were compared with the performance of the FLC.
This paper is organized as follows. The ROV dynamics
and kinematics modelling are addressed in Section 2. It is
followed by the dynamic positioning using virtual reality in
Section 3. In Section 4, the FLC and applications of GUIDE
15
on the ROV are discussed. Lastly, the conclusions are
drawn.
2 ROV dynamics modelling
In this section, the dynamic model of the Falcon ROV is
presented. The Falcon ROV (weighted 73.3 kg, 1 m×0.6 m×
0.5 m) is used as a platform for the study of dynamic
positioning control using FLC. It is an inspection class ROV
that is meant for marine surveys up to 300 m. In ROV’s
dynamic modelling, it is crucial to have an accurate
dynamic model of the ROV to carry out computer
simulation studies. Unfortunately, due to modelling
uncertainties, the model derived from the
computational-fluid dynamic (CFD) software and
experimental techniques can be inadequate for control
system design. These uncertainties are mainly due to the
hydrodynamic forces which are experimentally and
theoretically difficult to obtain. Nevertheless, experiments
have been done and published on the hydrodynamic
parameter estimation of the Falcon ROV (Soylu et al.,
2010). Besides, for control design purpose, there is a need to
consider a simplified nominal model (Fossen, 1994) with
additive perturbation such as ocean current that are adequate
to represent the ROV dynamic behavior in under water.
2.1 CAD modelling
A CAD model of ROV is required to obtain the inertia
properties (such as mass and moment of inertia data) and to
create the VRML model for the later animation. Solidworks
CAD software was used for the mechanical design of the
ROV. The Falcon ROV uses polypropylene for the
construction of the ROV body (Chassis) which is a
non-corroding and maintenance free material with a density
of 855 kg/m3.Whilst some of the frame parts uses composite
material and the additional fittings that isdirectly bolted to
the chassis. This information was then fed into the CAD
software to generate the ROV model.
Besides, the Falcon ROV is propelled with five
magnetically coupled thruster units, having a diameter of
0.200 m. Four of them are in horizontal plane for the
horizontal motion and one is in the vertical plane for the
heave motion. Each thruster is able to achieve at least 13 kgf
thruster forces, making it almost 1:1 power to weight ratio.
The inertia properties were calculated using the SolidWorks
mass properties calculation tool (see Fig.1).
Fig. 1 Inertia properties of Falcon ROV (mass, volume,
moment of inertia)
16 Midhin Das Thekkedan, et al. Virtual Reality Simulation of Fuzzy-logic Control during Underwater Dynamic Positioning
The mass and the center of mass obtained from the
software are as follows: 73.3 kg, xG = −0.28 m, yG = 0.10 m
and zG = 0.08 m respectively. The moment of inertia values
computed are namely: IXX = 9 kg·m2, IYY = 11.79 kg·m2, IZZ =
5.45 kg·m2.
2.2 Dynamic modelling
Experimenting with a real ROV is time consuming and
expensive. A dynamic model is useful for simulation
purposes and testing different control algorithms. The ROV
model is conventionally represented by six degrees of
freedom (DOF), nonlinear set of first order differential
equations of motion, which may be integrated numerically
to yield vehicle linear and angular velocities, given suitable
initial conditions. Two reference frames (see Fig. 2) are
used to describe the vehicles states: inertial frame (or
earth-fixed frame) and local body-fixed frame with its
origin coincident with the vehicle’s center of gravity. For
marine vehicles, the six DOF are conventionally defined by
the following vectors:
1) η = [η1 η2 ] T = [ x y z | ϕ θ ψ ] T position and
orientation (Euler angles) in inertia frame;
2) v = [v1 v 2 ] T = [u v w | p q r ] T linear and
angular velocities in body-fixed frame;
3) τ = [τ 1 τ 2 ] T = [τ x τ y τ z | τ ϕ τ θ τ ψ ] T forces
and moments acting on the vehicle in body-fixed frame.
Fig. 2 ROV’s Inertial and body-fixed reference frames
The mathematical model (Fossen, 1994) of an underwater
vehicle can be expressed, with respect to a local body-fixed
reference frame, by nonlinear equations of motion in
compact form:
Mv + C (v )v + D ( v ) v + g (η) = τ
η = J ( η 2 ) v
where v is the body-fixed velocity vector, η is the
earth-fixed vector, M = M RB + M A ∈ ℜ 6× 6 is the inertia
matrix for rigid body and added mass respectively,
g(η)∈ℜ 6 is the gravitational and buoyancy vector,
C (v ) = C RB (v ) + C A (v ) ∈ℜ6×6 is the Coriolis
centripetal matrix for rigid body and added mass
respectively, D ( v ) ∈ℜ6×6 is the linear and quadratic
damping matrix respectively. The propulsion force and
moment vector τ = TKu ∈ ℜ 6 relates the thrust output
vector u ∈ ℜ 5 with the thruster configuration matrix
T ∈ ℜ 6×5 , K ∈ ℜ 5× 5 force and moment from each thruster,
J (η 2 ) is the Euler transformation matrix which brings the
inertia frame into alignment with the body-fixed frame.
In Eq. (1), g (η) term is used to describe the
gravitational and buoyancy (Fossen, 1994) vector exerted
on the ROV in water. The gravitational and buoyancy forces
are functions of orientation and are independent of vehicle
motion. When fully submerged, the ROV’s buoyancy is
equal to the weight of water displaced, i.e. B = ρ g ∇
where ρ is the fluid density and ∇ is the volume displaced
by the submerged ROV. In the body-fixed coordinate
system, the restoring force vector becomes:
 (W − B ) sin θ 
 
− (W − B ) cos θ sin ϕ
 
 − (W − B ) cos θ cos ϕ 
g ( η) =  
 − ( y GW − y B B ) cos θ cos ϕ + ( z GW − z B B ) cos θ sin ϕ 
 ( z GW − z B B ) sin θ + ( x GW − x B B ) cos θ cos ϕ 
 
 − ( x GW − x B B ) cos θ sin ϕ − ( y GW − y B B ) sin θ 
(3)
The simplified buoyancy and gravitational force
hydrodynamic damping matrix, g ( η ) was obtained using
the following design rules. As the ROV was made to be
neutrally buoyant by adding additional float or balancing
mass, the gravitational force due to the ROV weight can be
made equal to the buoyancy force, that is W=B. And by
placing the additional mass on the ROV on the appropriate
location, the XY coordinates of the center of buoyancy
coincide with the XY coordinate of the center of gravity, that
is xG= xB and yG= yB. Eq. (3) becomes:
 0 
 0 
 
 0 
g ( η) =   (4)
(
 G z − z B )W cos θ sin ϕ 
 ( z G − z B )W sin θ 
 
 0 
(1) Since the ROV is quite symmetric about the XZ plane and
close to symmetric about YZ plane, we assumed that the
(2) motions in surge, sway, pitch and yaw are decoupled
(Fossen, 1994). Although it is not symmetric about the XY
plane, the surge and heave motions are considered to be
decoupled because the vehicle is operated at a relative low
speed in which the coupling effects can be negligible. With
this assumption, the drag matrix becomes
and D = −diag { X u , Yv , Z w , K p , M q , N r } (5)
Journalof Marine Science and Application (2015) 14: 14-24 17

The relationship between the hydrodynamic forces and where C = (b / 2)sin α + ( a / 2) cos α and α is the angle
moments and accelerations can be represented by the added of the thruster as shown in Fig. 3.
mass. For example, if there is acceleration u in the
X-direction, the hydrodynamic force X arising from that
motion can be given as: X = X u u where X u = ∂X ∂u is
the hydrodynamic derivative. The effects of the off-diagonal
elements in MA on an underwater vehicle in (1) are small
compared to the diagonal elements. For most low speed
underwater vehicles, these off-diagonal terms are often
neglected. This approximation is found to hold true for
many applications (Fossen, 1994). Hence, MA is simplified
to a diagonal form as follows:
M A = −diag{ X u ,Yv , Z w , K p , M q , N r } (6)
Fig. 3 Thruster’s arrangement
where X u is the added mass along X-axis due to an
The forces and moments generated by the thrusterson the
acceleration u in X-direction, X v is the added mass
ROV depend on the input voltage signals. It is given by
along X-axis due to an acceleration v in Y-direction and so forces and moments, K from each thruster, i as shown.
forth. K = RT f i (10)
The negative signs present in MA arise as the pressure
forces on the ROV would tend to retard the vehicle motion. where RT ∈ ℜ 5×5 is vector pointing from the origin to the
The real mass (or the rigid body mass) and the virtual added location of the thruster, f i = 2.98 ×10−4 ui3 − 0.016 ui ui +
mass are originally on opposite sides of the equation; one is 0.32u i is the force from each thruster, i and u i is the
a rigid body property, while the other is related to the measured input signal to each thruster i. A series of
(pressure) force experienced by the vehicle when the virtual experimental tests (Soylu et al., 2010) were performed to
mass is “subtracted” from the real mass. The net effect has verify the damping and added mass coefficients used.
greater apparent mass in most DOF, hence the virtual mass
is “added mass”. As the off-diagonal elements in MA are 2.3 Environmental disturbance modelling
neglected, the corresponding Coriolis and centripetal added The environmental disturbances are disturbances caused
mass matrix C A (v ) becomes: to the system due to the action of waves, winds and ocean
current. For a fully submerged object, the disturbance
 0 0 0 0 − Z w w Yvv  caused by the wind is quite negligible. The wave
 0 0 0 Z w w 0 − X u u 
  disturbance is only significant when the ROV is near to the
 0 0 0 −Yv v X uu 0  surface and at a depth lesser than 10 m (Fossen, 1994).
C A (v ) =   (7) Since the ROV operates beyond this depth, only the ocean
 0 − Z ww Y v v 0 − N r r M q q 
 Z w w current disturbance will be considered.
0 − X uu N r r 0 − K p p 
  The current velocity can be written as
 −Y v v X u u 0 − M q q K p p 0 
v c = v t + v tw + v S + v m + v s + v d (11)
For control, the Falcon ROV is underactuated with four where v t is the tidal component, v tw is the local wind
horizontal thrusters to provide maneuvering in surge, sway component, v S is the non-linear wave component, v m is
and yaw directions and one vertical thruster is dedicated for
the component due to major ocean circulation, v s is the
the heave motion of ROV. But the roll and pitch motions are
self-stabilized by design, and hence the controllable motions component due to set-up phenomena and storm surges, v d
are surge, sway, heave and yaw. The propulsion forces and is the local density driver current components governed by
moments acting on the ROVcan be described as: strong density jumps in the upper ocean. The current
τ = TKu (8) velocity is modelled based on the model (Fossen, 1994) that
suggested the forces and moments due to current can be
where u is a unit vector pointing in the direction as the considered by modelling the ROV non-linear equation of
thruster exerts its force and T is the thrusters’ motion in terms of relative velocity.
configuration matrix given as: vr = v − vc (12)
cos α cos α cos α cos α 0
where, v c = [u c vc wc 0 0 0] T is the current
 sin α − sin α sin α − sin α 0
  velocity vector in body fixed frame. As the earth-fixed
 0 0 0 0 1 current velocity vector is given by
T =  (9)
 0 0 0 0 0 v cE = [u cE vcE wcE 0 0 0] T , the body-fixed velocity
 0 0 0 0 0
  can be determined by Euler’s transformation.
 C −C −C C 0
18 Midhin Das Thekkedan, et al. Virtual Reality Simulation of Fuzzy-logic Control during Underwater Dynamic Positioning

u cE = u c cos α 1 cos β (13a)
v = v c sin β
E
c (13b)
w = wc sin α 1 cos β
E
c (13c)
where α1 is the angle of attack and β is the sideslip angle.
Hence, the dynamic equation of ROV in (1) becomes:
Mv r + C (v r )v r + D ( v r ) v r + g (η) = τ (14)
The overall view of the ROV dynamic model can be seen in
Fig. 4. The desired dynamic positions of the ROV are: xd =
yd = 3 m, zd = 2 m, ψ d = 2 rad. One can visualize this as a
joystick inputs to move the ROV manually. The error signal
can be computed by finding the difference between the
desired inputs and actual feedback of the ROV positions.
The signal is then passed to the controller to control the
ROV through the pseudo-inverse which optimize the
computed control signal in six DOF into the five available
thrusters. The thrust configuration on the ROV is
determined by the thrust configuration matrix. The total
forces to the ROV body dynamics is characterized by the
rigid body and added mass matrix, Coriolis and centripetal
forces, damping forces and gravitational and buoyancy
forces. The sum of all these forces that is multiplied by the
inverse of the rigid body and added mass matrix gives the
acceleration of the vehicle. With the integration function,
the velocities are computed and loop back for the next time
iteration until the simulation time have reached. Besides
obtaining the body-fixed velocities, the earth-fixed position
or the ROV positions with respect to the inertial frame can
be found by the Euler’s transformation block. The Euler’s
angle is used for the calculation of the gravitational and
buoyancy forces required in the ROV dynamics.

Fig. 4 Open-loop ROV model

The dynamic model of ROV was modelled using
SimulinkTM. To evaluate the model, an open-loop
simulation was performed. Current velocity was assumed
to be 0.02 m/s at a 45° angle of attack. The simulation time
was set to 20 s and variable-step type ordinary differential
equation (ODE), ODE45 (Dormand-Prince solver and
relative tolerance of 0.001) was used to solve the
differential equations. The simulation results for the
(a) Surge (b) Sway open-loop simulation are shown. As shown in Fig. 5, it is
observed that the ROV is unable to achieve the desired
positions despite the roll and pitch response are small and
stable. Hence, a controller is required to achieve the desired
positions.

3 Virtual reality model of ROV

A general ROV simulator has been developed in
(c) Heave (d) Roll MATLABTM andSimulinkTM environment. This model
includes the nonlinear model of an ROV with six DoF
motion, propulsion system and disturbance model. In order
to enhance the user interface and improve understanding of
the proposed controller approach, a realistic virtual
underwater world environment was developed. A 3D
animation of the ROV simulation called virtual reality
world (see Fig. 6) was developed using the output signals
from the open-loop model in Fig. 4. This allows the
(e) Pitch (f) Yaw movement and position data to be animated and displayed
Fig. 5 Open-loop simulation results for surge, sway, heave, during the dynamic positioning. To achieve that, a virtual
roll, pitch and yaw
Journalof Marine Science and Application (2015) 14: 14-24
reality modelling language (VRML) was used to create the
virtual reality for the ROV during the inspection tasks.
The different stages of 3D animation building process are
shown in Fig. 7. The CAD model is exported into VRML
file format that allows the V-Realm editor to edit the VRML
model of ROV. The V-Realm builder has an extensive object
library where the user can import the 3D background
sceneries and objects to create a virtual world. The
backgrounds such as the ocean and offshore structures are
then imported from the VRML editor library. Next, VR-sink
block provided by the 3D animation toolbox in SimulinkTM
create the connection between VRML model and
SimulinkTM block diagrams. This enables the visualisation
of ROV movement using the output position data (such as
surge, sway, heave and yaw or even roll and pitch) from
SimulinkTM. This allows the translational motion (surge,
sway and heave) and angular motion (roll, pitch and yaw) of
the ROV to be displayed and simulated in the 3D
environment as shown in Fig. 6.
Fig. 6 Virtual reality world of ROV during dynamic positioning
Fig. 8 V-Realm builder screenshot
4 Fuzzy logic controller (FLC) design for ROV
With the virtual reality established, the control system
design needs to be performed. The fuzzy logic was used to
control the dynamic positioning of the ROV (see Fig. 10).
Unlike the conventional controllers which use the control
algorithms, described by algebraic or differential equations,
FLC requires less mathematical model. There are two types
of fuzzy inference techniques called Mamdani and Sugeno.
In this paper, the Sugeno method is used. It uses a
mathematical function of the input variable unlike Mamdani,
which uses a rule fuzzy set. The Sugeno method can be
quite computationally effective and widely used in most
control problems. There are three basic steps to develop a
FLC are namely: fuzzification, inference rules and
19
As shown in Fig. 8, the VRML editor has hierarchical
tree style showing all elements in the virtual world. These
structure elements are known as nodes. The tree allows
changing and modifying of the virtual world and allows
changing viewpoints to improve the view of the virtual
reality world. Necessary lighting and proper coordinate
system could also add to make the background and ROV
more realistic.
After creating the virtual world using V-Realm editor, the
SimulinkTM model of the ROV is connected to the virtual
world through VR- Sink block. By connecting the model to
the virtual world, the output data form the SimulinkTM
model can be used to control and animate the virtual world
as shown in Fig. 9. The sample time for each ROV steps
was set to 0.1 s. The translational ROV’s motion outputs
and the rotational motion outputswere configured to animate
the position of the ROV in the virtual reality world. Fig. 9
shows the final virtual reality animation of the ROV
together with the block diagram.
Fig. 7 Process of virtual reality animation of ROV
Fig. 9 Virtual reality animation of ROV
defuzzification. Fuzzification process translates the system
inputs from real domain into the fuzzy domain in the form
of linguistic variables. The linguistic variables range from 0
to 1. Control rules are set based on the designers experience
and the control tasks are performed using these rules. The
inference outputs are decoded back into the real domain by
the defuzzifier. The controller can be fine-tuned to achieve
the required task. The typical FLC can be seen in the block
diagram in Fig. 10.
It is possible to develop the FLC either using
MATLABTM command line or the Fuzzy Logic Toolbox. In
this project, Fuzzy Logic Toolbox was used. The Graphical
User Interface (GUI), provided by the FLC toolbox, is user
friendly platform for the design. The membership function
editor and the rule editor, provided by the toolbox, enables
20 Midhin Das Thekkedan, et al. Virtual Reality Simulation of Fuzzy-logic Control during Underwater Dynamic Positioning

to build, edit and observe the fuzzy inference system. The
membership functions need to be qualitatively (the type of
function) and quantitatively (give proper values to the
parameters of membership function) defined before the
fuzzification process. The Sugeno type fuzzy inference
system has two linguistic input variables. They are error (e),
the error between desired and actual value, and change of
error ( e ). The set of linguistic terms associated with error (e)
are, e (error) = {Negative Big (NB), Negative Medium
(NM), Negative Small (NS), Zero (Z), Positive Small (PS),
Positive Medium (PM), and Positive Big (PB)}. Each term
has a semantic rule that is associated to a membership
function. After creating the membership functions for the e
and e , Output membership functions are defined for the
control voltage to the thruster.

Fig. 10 Block diagram of FLC for Falcon ROV

The key fact about the fuzzy decision making system is gravity method was used to obtain crisp values of the output
that all the inputs and outputs should be in fuzzy terms, to from the reference output fuzzy sets. The linguistic output
be used in fuzzy environment. Fuzzification is used to variable is the voltage applied to the thrusters. The output
change all the parameter into fuzzy terms. In this example, membership functions have seven singleton functions
the input membership functions have trapezoidal and asshown in Fig. 14.
triangular shape. PL and NL are the saturation limits
imposed on the fuzzy logic controller (FLC). The input
membership function for error (e) is shown in Fig. 11.
As shown in Fig. 11, when there is an error equals to 0.3,
it will be transformed into fuzzy domain in the form of
linguistic variable, according to the membership function.
The term Z has a membership degree of 0.1; PS has a
membership degree of 0.82, and all other terms have
membership degree equal to zero. The fuzzy inference
operation is then carried out using the pre-set, forty-nine
rules consisting of If-Then statements. These statements can
Fig. 11 Input membership function for error function
be edited using rule editor provided by the toolbox. The
rules can be connected either by ‘OR’ Boolean operation or
by ‘AND’ Boolean operation. In this paper, the rules are
connected by ‘AND’, which expresses the lesser value
between the membership functions of both the inputs. The
‘THEN’ operator stores the results of the previous operation
in the output term. The result of the FLC will be the union
of all the output terms. The forty-nine rules defining the
control action can be edited using the rule editor as shown
in Fig. 12.
The Sugeno control surface can be plotted in 3D to
visualise the output for each input. The control surface is Fig. 12 Rule editor of FLC toolbox
plotted using the MATLABTM plot command by exporting
the values to the MATLABTM workspace. It is clear from the
plot (see Fig. 13) that the control surface can be
approximatedby a linear surface.
Lastly, the defuzzification is the process of converting
fuzzy variables to crisp values, because the output linguistic
terms and output membership degrees cannot be directly
used to govern the action of thrusters to position the ROV.
So the controller output must be defuzzified. The centre of Fig. 13 Sugeno control surface
Journalof Marine Science and Application (2015) 14: 14-24 21

Big). The centre of gravity method is used to calculate the

Fig. 14 Output membership function
The linguistic variables are NB (Negative Big), NM
(Negative Medium), NS (Negative Small), Z (Zero), PS
(Positive Small), PM (Positive Medium) and PB (Positive
centre of the area formed by the sum of all the output terms
of the fuzzy controller. The following formula was used to
convert the fuzzy variables to crisp values.The input and
output fuzzy variables, inference system, fuzzifier and
defuzzifier can be defined by setting the parameters in
MATLABTM GUI for FLC. The FLC is finally connected to
the ROV model as seen in Fig. 15.

Fig. 15 Simulation block diagram of FLC

(a) Surge (b) Sway

Fig. 17 Desired and actual trajectory for FLC

The virtual reality sink block was introduced into the
SimulinkTM block diagram to facilitate the 3D animation.
This enables the user to visualise the dynamic positioning of
the ROV in virtual reality environment. To evaluate the
(c) Heave (d) Roll performance of the controller, desired inputs for six DOF of
the ROV was given into the system. The following inputs
were used: xd = yd =3 m, zd = 2 m, ψd = 2 rad. The current
velocity was chosen to be 0.02 m/s with the angle of attack
of 45°. The FLC was designed for the dynamic positioning
of ROV under external disturbance such as ocean current.
The performance of the controller was satisfactory. As seen
in Fig. 16, itindicates that the sway motion takes more time
(e) Pitch (f) Yaw
to reach the desired input value (that is 3 m) than the surge.
Fig. 16 Simulation results using FLC
It may be due to the larger surface area of the ROV (in sway
22 Midhin Das Thekkedan, et al. Virtual Reality Simulation of Fuzzy-logic Control during Underwater Dynamic Positioning
direction) that it had to overcome.In less than 1 000 s, the
ROV reached the desired position and the angular motions
(that is the roll, pitch, and yaw) converge to zero. The
desired trajectory and the actual trajectory of the ROV are
depicted in Fig. 17.
5 Graphical user interface for dynamic positioning
In order to improve the ROV’s performance, the design
of a suitable user-interface represents an important factor.
For this reason, the GUI is used to improve the system
autonomy such that the user effort decreases. In this section,
the GUI using MATLABTM GUIDE is used to analyse the
results and display the performance of different controllers
such as PID and SMC. The MATLABTM GUIDE is a
commercially applicable dynamic positioning interactive
tool that is widely available in most academic institutions.
The dynamic model of Falcon was created in SimulinkTM
environment, and three controllers such as PID, SMC and
FLC were simulated and compared in the GUIDE platform.
This interactive interface enables the user to input the
desired values to the system and to observe the effects of
different controllers on the ROV responses during different
ocean current speed and direction, without much
programming. The GUIDE provides easier interaction
between graphical interface and the model as well as the
functions to simplify the standard dialog boxes. The current
velocity should range from 0.01 m/s to 0.2 m/s and the
direction (angle of attack of current) must be able to vary
from 0 to 360 degree. Besides, it will create an option to
choose different controllers and desired values for the ROV.
The GUI was designed in such a way that to make it user
friendly as well as to meet the above-mentioned objectives.
The required components for the GUI, such as slider, list
box, textbox and graphs were taken from the toolbox to the
GUI layout. The interfacing of SimulinkTM model must be
done in the GUI programming using m-file editor. Fig. 18
shows the final GUI of the dynamic positioning interface
and its 3D virtual reality visualisation of the ROV.
Fig. 18 Final GUI and virtual reality visualisation of ROV
Since the major external disturbance acting on a ROV
system is the ocean current force, it is included in the
simulation. The velocity of the current as well as the angle
of attack can be adjusted by the user (see Fig. 18). The
thruster dynamics described earlier is modelled in
SimulinkTM. The GUI enables user to input values into the
five thrusters (four horizontal and one vertical) in order to
simulate the thruster force during the open loop simulation.
Here ‘HT’ is the horizontal thruster and ‘VT’ is the vertical
thruster. Once the open loop simulation push button is
pressed, the user can visualise the ROV movement in the
virtual reality environment. This 3D real time simulation of
the ROV will provide a better understanding of the ROV
dynamics and dynamic positioning performance of the
controllers. As mentioned, the GUI toolbox enables the user
to analyse the performances of different controllers during
the dynamic positioning of the ROV. The user can select
either controller from FLC, SMC or PID controller.
The closed-loop simulation of ROV is performed after
the user defines the inputs for the six DOF (surge, sway,
heave, roll, pitch and yaw) values. As different controllers
can be chosen, each controller stabilises the ROV to its final
position. The results are reflected on the GUI screenas
shown in Fig. 18. The simulated 3D trajectories of all the
three controllers are shown in Fig. 19. For consistency, the
ROV was assumed to start from origin. The plot shows the
position performance of each controller. The performances
of all the three controllers are considered in each DOF
separately and the comparisons of the position responses are
performed. It is clear from Fig. 20 that the PID controller
reached surge position, xd = 3 m before FLC and SMC. In
this case, the PID controller took approximately 200 s and
while FLC and SMC took longer time to settle to its
steady-state surge position. For the sway response in Fig. 21,
SMC has a shorter settling time as compared to other two
controllers. As observed in Fig. 22, there is some different
in the settling time for the case of the heave motion.
However, both the roll and pitch response were
self-stabilizing without any control action. The yaw
response (as seen in Fig. 23) shows satisfactory
performance in particular, the FLC performs slightly better
than the PID and SMC. As observed from all the position
responses, the steady-state values are achieved.
From the results obtained, it is clear that the SMC
performs better than the FLC and PID controllers. However,
each controller has its own advantages and disadvantages.
For example, SMC has shown good dynamic positioning
performance and rejection of external disturbances, but it
has a more complex mathematical stricture and achattering
phenomenon (due to the fast switching around the sliding
surface). On the other hand, PID controller possesses the
simplest structure of all but it is not as robust as compared
to the SMC when subjected to the disturbance. The FLC
does not require a ROV model that gives a simple structure
as compared to SMC. However, the response of the SMC is
quite noisy due to its switchingor chattering action. In
summary, the position responses of all controllers were
simulated and compared on the ROV under the current
disturbances in the proposed virtual reality simulation
platform.
Journalof Marine Science and Application (2015) 14: 14-24
Fig. 19 Performance comparison of three controllers
Fig. 20 Surge response for controllers
Fig. 21 Sway response for controllers
Fig. 22 Heave response for controllers
Fig. 23 Yaw response for controllers
23
6 Conclusions
The building of GUI software for simulation and control
of a ROV using MATLABTM GUI Designing Environment
was proposed. The interactive GUI program allows the user
to animate different disturbance characteristics and the types
of controllers used. Besides, the closed loop control system
design using fuzzy-logic based was designed to achieve
dynamic positioning of the ROV model. The simulation
results of the ROV showed that it was able to perform the
dynamic positioning. When the FLC was compared with
other controllers such as PID and SMC, the simulated
results give reasonable performance under the current
disturbance.
In summary, the three-dimensional (3D) animation has
wide commercial application such as in pilot training. The
ROV motion can be visualised from different points by
setting different viewpoints, and more realistic visualisation
is possible by making the background more realistic.
Though the dynamic positioning tool was designed
particularly for the Falcon ROV, it can be extended to any
other ROV, by changing the hydrodynamic parameters in
the dynamic model.
For future works, the 3D animation developed using the
VRML model will equip with collision detection during
maneuvering. Besides, the proposed dynamic positioning
interactive tool will include more controllers for
comparisons and the tether dynamics.
Acknowledgement
The author would like to express his thanks to the
Newcastle University, for providing the software and
support during the project.
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