A Practical Trajectory Tracking Scheme for a Twin-Propeller Twin-Hull Unmanned Surface Vehicle

Abstract

Trajectory tracking is a basis of motion control for Unmanned Surface Vehicles (USVs), which has been researched well for common USVs. The twin-propeller and twin-hull USV (TPTH-USV) is a special vehicle for applications due to its good stability and high load. We propose a three-layered architecture of trajectory tracking for the TPTH-USV which explicitly decomposes into trajectory guidance, a motion limitator and controller. The trajectory guidance transforms an expected trajectory into an expected speed and expected course in a kinematic layer. The motion limitator describes some restriction for motion features of the USV in the restriction layer, such as the maximum speed and maximum yaw rate. The controller is to control the speed and course of the USV in the kinetic layer. In the first layer, an adaptive line-of-sight guidance law is designed by regulating the speed and course to track a curved line considering the sideslip angle. In the second layer, the motion features are extracted from an identified speed and course coupled model. In the last layer, the course and speed controller are designed based on a twin-PID controller. The feasibility and practicability of the proposed trajectory tracking scheme is validated in sea experiments by a USV called ‘Jiuhang 490’.

Trajectory Tracking Predictive Control for Unmanned Surface Vehicles with Improved Nonlinear Disturbance Observer

“…However, due to disturbances from the sea wind, waves, and current, trajectory tracking control is of widespread concern. There have many studies undertaken on the control of the USV trajectory tracking technologies, including the PID controller [1][2][3][4], sliding mode control [5][6][7][8], backstepping control [9][10][11][12], MPC [13][14][15][16], adaptive control [17][18][19][20] and intelligent control [21][22][23][24].…”

Maritime Autonomous Vessels

“…The main goal of this book is to address key challenges, thereby promoting research on marine autonomous ships. There are many topics on autonomous vessels involved in this book, for instance, automatic control [1][2][3][4], manoeuvrability [5][6][7][8], collision avoidance [9][10][11], ship target identification [12][13][14][15], motion planning [16], and buckling analysis [17].…”

“…Simulations and ship model tests were performed to validate the integrated system of autonomous ships. Jin et al [2] proposed a twin-PID controller for the trajectory tracking of a twin-hull unmanned surface vehicle (USV), and an adaptive line-of-sight guidance law was designed by regulating the speed and course to track a curved line considering the sideslip angle. The proposed control system was validated in sea experiments by a USV called 'Jiuhang 490'.…”