In this paper, a new slid..ng mode controller is proposed for the heading control of the submersible vehicle. Within a fixed boundary layer around the switch surface, since the fuzzy logic is applied, the chattering phenomenon is eliminated by smoothing the switch signal. Outside the boundary, the sliding mode control is applied to driving the system states into the boundary layer. Moreover, the switching surface with integral component is adopted for compensating the outside constant disturbances and eliminating the steady state error. In order to prove the effectiveness of the new controller, several methods are compared and the simulation results show that the proposed new controller owns good performance of the heading control in the presence of uncerta..nties about the dynamics and hydrodynamic disturbances.