Nonlinear control of an unmanned amphibious vehicle

The DUCKW-Ling is an 8.3 foot long, amphibious water plane area twin hull (SWATH) concept vehicle which is propelled by a pair of crawler tracks on land and dual propellers when water-borne. In its operational zone, the vehicle's dynamics change dramatically as it transitions from being completely water-borne and buoyancy supported to being completely land-borne and track supported. In the water environment, a cascaded, first-order sliding mode controller was used to control the surge and heading of the vehicle, and was capable of having a faster response when compared to using a proportional controller. Additionally, field trials of the DUKW-Ling show the capability of the vehicle to navigate and track predetermined waypoints in both terrestrial and aquatic terrains. In the transitional zone, the electric motor current from the tracks was used as the feedback mechanism to adequately actuate the propellers and tracks in the system as the dynamics of the vehicle change.