Disturbance Attenuation Trajectory Tracking Control of Unmanned Surface Vessel Subject to Measurement Biases

This article addresses trajectory tracking control of unmanned surface vessels (USVs) subject to position and velocity measurement biases. Unlike model uncertainties and external disturbances, measurement biases can lead to mismatched disturbances in system kinematics, rendering great difficulty to the USV control system design. To overcome this problem, a disturbance attenuation controller was recursively synthesized by incorporating two disturbance observers into the backstepping control design. The stability argument shows that all error signals in the closed-loop system can regulate to the small neighborhoods about the origin. The proposed controller has two remarkable features: (1) By adopting two disturbance observers to estimate the mismatched and matched lumped disturbances, the proposed controller is robust against model uncertainties and external disturbances and insensitive to measurement biases. (2) Meanwhile, the proposed controller is structurally simple and user friendly. Lastly, comparative simulations were conducted to validate the obtained results.