Disturbance observer-based backstepping control for leader–follower ships with disturbances

ABSTRACT

This paper studies leader–follower cooperative control with the slowly-varying environment disturbances of the surface ships, which are mainly caused by wind, wave and current. A disturbance observer is constructed to estimate the slowly-varying environmental disturbances. Based on disturbance observer, the control law of the follower ship is designed by backstepping technique. The disturbance observer-based leader–follower cooperative control scheme is carried out via employing stochastic control theory to analyse the close-loop system. The scheme achieves the follower ship track the leader ship with a certain error range for cooperative movement and all signals are bounded in the mean square. Finally, the results of simulation are listed to verify the scheme.

KEYWORDS:

• Disturbance observer
• backstepping
• leader–follower ships
• cooperative
• tracking control

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was proposed by the National Natural Science Foundation of China 61973149, 62273172, 61903174, the Key Project of Natural Science Foundation of Shandong Province ZR2020KF029, Outstanding Youth Innovation Team Project of Shandong Higher Education Institution under Grant 2021KJ042.