Adaptive Optimal Tracking Control of an Underactuated Surface Vessel Using Actor–Critic Reinforcement Learning

In this article, we present an adaptive reinforcement learning optimal tracking control (RLOTC) algorithm for an underactuated surface vessel subject to modeling uncertainties and time-varying external disturbances. By integrating backstepping technique with the optimized control design, we show that the desired optimal tracking performance of vessel control is guaranteed due to the fact that the virtual and actual control inputs are designed as optimized solutions of every subsystem. To enhance the robustness of vessel control systems, we employ neural network (NN) approximators to approximate uncertain vessel dynamics and present adaptive control technique to estimate the upper boundedness of external disturbances. Under the reinforcement learning framework, we construct actor–critic networks to solve the Hamilton–Jacobi–Bellman equations corresponding to subsystems of surface vessel to achieve the optimized control. The optimized control algorithm can synchronously train the adaptive parameters not only for actor–critic networks but also for NN approximators and adaptive control. By Lyapunov stability theorem, we show that the RLOTC algorithm can ensure the semiglobal uniform ultimate boundedness of the closed-loop systems. Compared with the existing reinforcement learning control results, the presented RLOTC algorithm can compensate for uncertain vessel dynamics and unknown disturbances, and obtain the optimized control performance by considering optimization in every backstepping design. Simulation studies on an underactuated surface vessel are given to illustrate the effectiveness of the RLOTC algorithm.