Robust adaptive steering control for unmanned surface vehicle with unknown control direction and input saturation

Summary A robust adaptive steering control method is proposed to solve the control problem of the unmanned surface vehicle (USV) with uncertainties, unknown control direction, and input saturation. In the controller design process, the adaptive fuzzy system is incorporated into dynamic surface control (DSC) to approximate the uncertainty term induced by external environmental disturbances and model parameters. Then, the Nussbaum function is used to eliminate the requirement for a priori knowledge of the control direction. Besides, to handle the input saturation, the adaptive fuzzy DSC is extended by a second‐order nonlinear filter and antisaturation auxiliary function to compensate for the magnitude and rate saturation of the rudder. All signals of the closed‐loop system are proven to be uniformly ultimately bounded (UUB) by Lyapunov theorem and the Lemma of Nussbaum gain, and the course error can converge to a small neighborhood of zero through choosing design parameters appropriately. Finally, simulation results and comprehensive comparisons are shown for the USV course system, which is demonstrative of the proposed controller's effectiveness and robustness.