Objective This paper investigates the high-precision control challenges associated with the autonomous recovery of an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) by a dynamically moving docking base. During the docking process, the recovery performance is significantly affected by complex underwater environments, including time-varying external ocean currents and inherent model uncertainties. To address these challenges, this study aims to propose a robust double-loop control strategy designed to achieve rapid, stable, and precise pose alignment between the AUV and the moving docking base under constrained conditions.

Method Using the "White Dolphin 100" docking system as the primary research platform, a 5-DOF motion model is established to formulate the dynamic docking problem. The proposed control architecture consists of an outer kinematic loop for pose error regulation and an inner dynamic loop for velocity tracking, utilizing an adaptive fast nonsingular integral terminal sliding mode control (AFNITSMC) strategy. Specifically, a fast nonsingular integral terminal sliding mode surface is designed to ensure finite-time convergence of the system states while effectively eliminating the singularity issues inherent in conventional terminal sliding mode control methods. To enhance robustness, an adaptive lumped disturbance estimation law is incorporated to online estimate and compensate for uncertainties—such as model parameter mismatches and time-varying ocean currents—without requiring any prior knowledge of the disturbance upper bounds. Furthermore, a boundary layer technique is introduced into the switching term of the control law to mitigate the chattering phenomenon, thereby protecting the mechanical actuators. The stability and finite-time convergence of the overall closed-loop system are rigorously established using the Lyapunov stability theory.

Results Extensive simulation studies were conducted using the hydrodynamic parameters of the "White Dolphin 100" docking system to validate the effectiveness of the proposed control method. The simulation scenarios accounted for 20% thrust saturation limits, time-varying ocean current disturbances, and 20% perturbations in model parameters. The results indicate that the AFNITSMC method achieves rapid pose convergence within 10 seconds, with specific convergence times of 4.6, 7.0 and 9.39 s in the longitudinal, lateral, and vertical directions, respectively. This performance significantly surpasses that of the baseline nonsingular integral terminal sliding mode control (NITSMC), which required much longer intervals to stabilize. Regarding steady-state accuracy, the mean absolute errors (MAE) for position were measured at 0.142 cm, 0.103 cm, and 0.0397 cm, while the attitude errors were 0.012° and 0.054°. Compared to the NITSMC method, the proposed method reduced position errors by 75.7%, 87.6%, and 95.3%, and attitude errors by 96.5% and 62.2%, demonstrating its superior tracking precision and robustness.

Conclusion The proposed AFNITSMC exhibits excellent control performance and promising engineering application prospects in addressing the dynamic base docking problem under external disturbances and model uncertainties.