In this paper, a new region control scheme is proposed for underwater vehicle-manipulator systems (UVMS). In the proposed control concept, the desired objective can be specified as a region instead of a point. The proposed region control concept is a generalization of setpoint control problem because when the desired region is specified arbitrarily small, the control objective reduces to a point. Lyapunov-like function is proposed for the stability analysis. Simulation studies are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed controller.

In conventional setpoint control problem of robots, the desired position is specified as a point. However, it is interesting to observe from most human reaching movements that the desired targets are regions rather than points. In fact, when the desired region is specified arbitrarily small, it reduces to a point. In this paper, we propose a new control concept called region reaching control for robots. In this new control concept, the desired objective can be specified as a region instead of a point. Since the desired region can be specified arbitrarily small, the region control concept is also a generalization of setpoint control problem. Experimental results are presented to illustrate the performance of the proposed controllers.