Stability Analysis of an Underactuated Autonomous Underwater Vehicle Using Extended-Routh's Stability Method

In this paper, a new approach to stability analysis of nonlinear dynamics of an underactuated autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) is presented. AUV is a highly nonlinear robotic system whose dynamic model includes coupled terms due to the hydrodynamic damping factors. It is difficult to analyze the stability of a nonlinear dynamical system through Routh's stability approach because it contains nonlinear dynamic parameters owing to hydrodynamic damping coefficients. It is also difficult to analyze the stability of AUVs using Lyapunov's criterion and LaSalle's invariance principle. In this paper, we proposed the extended-Routh's stability approach to verify the stability of such nonlinear dynamic systems. This extended-Routh's stability approach is much easier as compared to the other existing methods. Numerical simulations are presented to demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed stability verification of the nonlinear dynamic systems, e.g., an AUV system dynamics.