Underwater vehicles have gained a widespread interest in the last decades, from various research
communities (design, actuation, perception, modelling, control, etc), given the multiple tasks
they can accomplish. Their applications are multiple and various in different fields such as dams’
inspection, oil and gas industry, fish farms, wind parks, hydroelectric power stations, underwater
archeology, ocean cartography, air crash and environmental investigations, etc. The control of
underwater vehicles is a thoroughly investigated subject but still an open research problem.
Indeed, when we are interested in autonomous control of underwater vehicles (ROVs, AUVs,
ASVs, bioinspired, etc) different control challenges may arise. They are mainly linked to the
inherent high nonlinearities and time varying behavior of their dynamics subject to
hydrodynamic effects and environmental disturbances. This talk will be focused control
challenges of small tethered underwater vehicles and some proposed control solutions. Different
control solutions, mainly issued from robust/adaptive control, will be then presented and
discussed. All the proposed controllers will be illustrated through real-time experiments on small
underwater vehicles in different operating conditions.