In this section, we use two cases to prove the feasibility and robustness of the proposed IT2FPID using MATLAB/Simulink.
4.1. Simulation with Perturbations
The ROV was modeled with an IT2FPID controller. The depth error and the derivative of the depth error are the input, and the torque is the output. The membership function is triangular for the Negative (N), Negative Big (NB), Negative Medium (NM), Positive (P), Positive Big (PB), Positive Medium (PM), and Zero (Z) linguistics terms.
Table 3 shows a set of fuzzy rules.
Figure 5 shows the IT2FC membership function sets of
and
, respectively. The difference between the actual value detected by the sensor and the set point can be used to determine the value of the deviation and the rate of change in the deviation at each instant. It is a continuous value that must be converted to a discrete quantity required for input to the controller in the process of discretizing the input domain and converting it into the speech value of the corresponding fuzzy set on the discourse domain, that is, fuzzification. However, this article does not involve experiments, and does not require discretization, which is needed in actual experiments.
Both inputs and outputs are in the range of [−3, 3], based on the literature review and previous experience. However, in order to better verify the performance of the small open-frame underwater robot controller, the two inputs [−1, 1] are chosen. Experimentation was performed with external interference—pulse generated noise. The amplitude and period of pulse generated noise, width, and phase delay were 0.1, 1, 10, and 0, respectively. The simulation time of the system was 40 s. The excitation function is a step response function, where step time, initial value, final value, and sample time are 1, 0, 1, and 0, respectively. The entire controller has two inputs—one is the depth error, and the other is the derivative of the depth error—and the output is the torque of the motor. The simulation of ROV is the depth trajectory tracking in the depth z direction, and we also added the interference of the pulse signal. The details of the interference signal have been given above.
The experimental standard is a series of performance indicators often used in control [
39,
40,
41], such as integral time absolute error (
ITAE), integral time square error (
ITSE), integral absolute error (
IAE), integral square value (
ISV), and integral square error (
ISE); the formula is as follows:
The results in
Table 4. show the performance of the different cases under the four TR methods, calculated with and without noise.
To better understand the results discussed in this section, several points need to be considered. First, the KM method was used to obtain the optimal PID parameters through the trial and error method so that the IT2FPID achieved its ideal performance. Based on this, the TR method was replaced, and the performance of the TR of the four methods was compared. The parameters of the IT2FPID controller are KP = 15, KI = 0.01, and KD = 80. KP, KI, KD correspond to the proportional factor, the integral factor, and the derivative factor, respectively.
Second, the results of the IT2FPID control rules and the membership function were summarized, based on experience.
In the case of external disturbance, the results are shown in
Figure 6. After comparing the four TR methods, the smaller the value, the better the control performance. It was found that NT showed the best performance, followed by BMM.
We see that the algorithm KM has a larger steady-state error in pulsating noise than the other three, and there is a large fluctuation at about 7s for the four, which is due to the fact that there is a large amplitude interference at this time. From the
Figure 6, it can be seen that the algorithm NT reaches the reference value quickly and exhibits the least overshoot.
To compare the performance differences of the four methods of TR in more detail, a comparative simulation without noise was performed.
We will compare the performances of the control systems with respect to the values of the following: settling time (Ts), overshoot (OS%), and average computational times (CTs). For a fair comparison and to show the effect of the TR method on the controller performance, we will set and fix the scaling factors of IT2FPID as K
P = 15, K
I = 0.01, and K
D = 80 [
42,
43].
The simulation results are shown in
Figure 7. The corresponding performance measures are tabulated in
Table 5. It can be clearly seen that the Ts of the four TR methods are the same. On the other hand, IT2FPID can reduce the OS% to close to zero. Moreover, although the TR defuzzification method is a structural parameter, it must be determined according to the design criteria. For this specific simulation study, we can see that the OS and CTs values of the NT method are the smallest among the four methods. However, in order to be able to generalize the results of these observations, extensive comparative simulations and real-time research must be conducted.
4.2. Simulation without Perturbations
Various loads were then used to test the effectiveness of the proposed scheme. The results of the above IT2FPID control method were compared with PID and T1FPID. The relevant parameters of the three different control methods were determined by the trial and error method, allowing all three controllers to achieve optimal performance.
The parameters of the IT2FPID, PID, and T1FPID controllers are as shown in
Table 6.
To illustrate the performance of each controller,
Figure 8 shows the depth control performed by the ROV using an IT2FPID and two different controller types. For example,
Figure 8 shows the performance of the fuzzy behavior for depth control based on an IT2FPD controller and a T1FPID controller, respectively. From the figure, it can be seen that the time required to reach a stable state is different. This is a natural response due to the different performances of each controller. As pointed out in reference [
44], the inclusion of higher order fuzzy controllers not only allows for more degrees of freedom in the fuzzy sets, but also improves system stability by including better handling uncertainty. Recent advances in the development of higher order fuzzy logic controllers, such as general type-2 fuzzy controllers (GT2 FLCs) [
45] and interval type-3 fuzzy control controllers (IT3 FLCs), have been shown to outperform conventional fuzzy controllers by better handling dynamic disturbances and actuator nonlinearities [
46]. Because the upper and lower parts of the FOU of IT3 FLCs are not constant, and the secondary MF is interval type 2. In GT2 and IT2 FLCs, T1 provides fuzzy sets and crisp numbers, respectively.
The effectiveness of the proposed IT2FPID has been clearly demonstrated by the simulation results, and the proposed control method is very robust, even in the absence of noise.
From
Table 7, we can see that these three methods of underwater depth control can be achieved with the ROV, but they are different in terms of their robustness and control performance. The OS% of IT2FPID is the smallest among these three control methods, followed by that of T1FPID and PID. The steady-state error of all control methods eventually approaches zero. The smallest overshoot is for IT2FPID, but the best response time is for T1FPID. Considering the superior overshoot performance of the IT2FPID control scheme, we believe that this sacrifice of control response speed is acceptable.
Briefly, the superiority of IT2FPID in overcoming the uncertainty and robustness of ROV underwater depth control is proven in this simulation.