Due to the great technological improvement obtained in the last decades, it became possible to use robotic vehicles for underwater exploration. During the execution of a certain task with a remotely operated underwater vehicle, the operator needs to monitor and control a number of parameters. If some of these parameters, as for instance position and attitude, could be controlled automatically, the teleoperation of the vehicle can be enormously facilitated. Based on experimental tests, it was verified that marine thrusters can exhibit dead-zone nonlinearities. This work describes the development of a variable structure control strategy for an underwater vehicle with a thrust system subject to dead-zone input.