In this article, an adaptive asymptotic tracking control approach is first proposed for the autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) on the horizontal plane by using the Bernstein polynomial approximation. Bernstein polynomials aim to compensate for the synthetical uncertainties including unknown model dynamics and environmental disturbances. However, they cannot be directly used due to the unknown polynomial coefficients. To avoid this trouble, the adaptive backstepping technique is applied to estimation. Considering that the adaptive backstepping can only procure the bounded steady tracking errors and suffer from the redundancy of adaptive parameters, we further integrate the σ-modification and the minimum learning parameter (MLP) technique with the Bernstein polynomial approximation, so as to guarantee the high-precision tracking performance of AUVs with the asymptotic convergent tracking errors and less computation burden. The direct Lyapunov’s method and the Barbalat’s lemma are introduced for proving the stability of the control system. Finally, simulation reveals the advantage of the proposed scheme.