LVS Guidance Based Output-feedback Path-Following Control for Underactuated Surface Vessels

This paper presents an adaptive output feedback control scheme for underactuated surface vessels' path following control problem. For the guidance part, the LVS (Logical Virtual Ship) algorithm is employed to generate the reference path. In order to reconstruct the speed-state, a concise coordinate transformation is introduced to make the high-gain observer suitable for the ship model structure. The uncertain items of the ship model are dealt with RBF-NN, which further improves the estimation effect of the observer. On the basis of the backstepping method, the DSC technique is introduced to avoid the derivation of the virtual control law. Simulation experiments are carried out in MATLAB environment to verify the effectiveness of the proposed scheme. The results show that compared with state feedback scheme, the control scheme proposed in this paper has the advantage of not relying on speed information on the basis of achieving high-precision tracking of the reference path. It can serve as a redundant solution in the case of sensor failure. Meanwhile it can save communication resources from the sensor to the controller, which is of great significance to ensure navigation safety and improve navigation efficiency.