A Model-Based Adaptive Control of Turning Maneuver for Catamaran Autonomous Surface Vessel

The effective computer control of airborne, waterborne, and ground autonomous vehicles has become one of the highest priorities in the area of cyber-physical systems, Industry 4.0 in particular, and the world economy in general. Despite extensive research on Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), the study of Autonomous Surface Vessels (ASVs) has been more than ten times less intense. As an attempt to fill a gap in that field, this article discusses the control mathematics of a realistic ASV nonlinear model of a real autonomous electric catamaran “Nymo”, which was designed at Tallinn University of Technology (TalTech). More technically, the article offers a novel adaptive control system that is based on knowledge of the main parameters of ASV and is specially designed for a Simulink/MATLAB environment. The article also enables adjusting variables like transition time and heading angle overshoot value. The control of the desired tracking is represented in such a maneuver as turning the catamaran at different angles. The designed control system has shown good quality in terms of accuracy in tracking the desired heading angles.