Fixed-time switching control of underactuated surface vessels with dead-zones: Global exponential stabilization

This paper investigates the problem of global exponential stabilization of underactuated surface vessels (USVs) with actuator dead-zones. By utilizing input and state transformations, the dynamic model of USV is converted into an equivalent system consisting of two cascade connected subsystems. For the transformed system, a switching scheme based on fixed-time control theory is presented. For one of the subsystems with input dead-zones, a fixed-time control method is proposed, which addresses the deadzone problem while guaranteeing global exponential stabilization. Simulations are given to demonstrate the effectiveness of presented method. (C) 2019 Published by Elsevier Ltd on behalf of The Franklin Institute.