Adaptive Robust Trajectory-Tracking Control of Underactuated Uncrewed Surface Vehicles With Environmental Disturbance and Variable Payload

For increasingly demanding maritime applications in complex conditions, such as infrastructure inspection and environmental monitoring, it is highly meaningful to develop underactuated uncrewed surface vehicles (USVs) with more accurate trajectory-tracking capabilities. However, to perform in complex real-world scenarios, USV trajectory-tracking controller design must simultaneously consider the issues of nonlinear dynamics, underactuated dynamics, environmental disturbances, and variable payloads in a comprehensive way. In this article, an integrated direct/indirect adaptive robust control framework is applied for USV dynamics. Within it, the indirect recursive least squares adaptation estimates variable payload terms and hydrodynamic parameters, while direct gradient-type adaptation performs rapid dynamic compensation for environmental disturbances and other uncertainties. Robust feedback terms help attenuate the remaining errors. An outer-loop kinematic controller is also designed for the underactuation of USVs to offset lateral errors and provide velocity references. Theoretical analysis is used to prove the closed-loop stability of the whole system, and its transient and steady-state performance are also guaranteed. Finally, comparative experiments under strong wind disturbances and with additional asymmetric payloads validate our proposed controller’s superior tracking accuracy, robustness, and adaptability.