Robust adaptive path-following control of underactuated marine vessel with off-track error constraint

ABSTRACT

In this paper, a new robust adaptive controller is investigated to force an underactuated surface marine vessel to follow a predefined parameterised path at a desired speed, despite actuator saturation and the presence of model uncertainties as well as environmental disturbances induced by waves, wind and sea-currents. To ensure robustness of the path-following controller, time-varying constraint on the off-track error (i.e. the maximal distance from the ship to the reference path) is considered. To address the off-track error constraint the tan-barrier Lyapunov function is incorporated with the control scheme, where the idea of auxiliary design system introduced in Chen, Sam, and Ren (2011) is adopted and its states are used in combination with backstepping and Lyapunov synthesis to adaptive tracking control design with guaranteed stability. Furthermore, the command filters are adopted to implement physical constraints on the virtual control laws so that analytic differentiation of the virtual control laws is avoided. We show that the proposed robust adaptive control law is able to guarantee semi-global uniform ultimate bounded stability of the closed-loop system. Numerical simulations and experimental results are carried out to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.

KEYWORDS:

• Underactuated surface vessel
• tan-barrier Lyapunov function
• actuator saturation
• backstepping control
• robust control
• path-following

Acknowledgement

The authors are greatful to the anonymous reviwers for their insights and suggestions in improving the paper.

6 Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. https://docs.emlid.com/navio2/

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jawhar Ghommam

Jawhar Ghommam is an Associate Professor of control engineering at Sultan Quaboos University in Oman. He is a member of the Control and Energy Management Lab and also an Associate Researcher at the GREPCI-Lab, Ecole de Technologie Superieure, Montreal, QC, Canada. His research interests include nonlinear control of underactuated mechanical systems, adaptive control, guidance and control of autonomous vehicles, and cooperative motion of nonholonomic vehicles.

Sami El Ferik

Sami el Ferik is an Associate Professor of Control and Instrumentation with the Department of Systems Engineering, King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals, Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. After the completion of the Ph.D. and Post-Doctor positions, he was with Pratt and Whitney Canada, Research and Development Center of Systems, Controls, and Accessories, Longueuil, QC, Canada. His current research interests include sensing, monitoring, multiagent systems, and nonlinear control with strong multidisciplinary research and applications.

Maarouf Saad

Maarouf Saad received the B.Sc. and the M.Sc. degrees from Cole Polytechnique of Montreal, Montreal, QC, Canada, in 1982 and 1984, respectively, and the Ph.D. degree from McGill University, Montreal, QC, Canada, in 1988, all in electrical engineering. In 1987, he joined Ecole de Technologie Superieure, Montreal, QC, Canada, where he is teaching control theory and robotics courses. His research interests include nonlinear control and optimization applied to robotics and flight control system, rehabilitation robotics, power systems, and distributed generation.