Review of nonlinear tracking and setpoint control approaches for autonomous underactuated marine vehicles

A review of different approaches to setpoint, trajectory tracking, and path following control for autonomous underactuated surface vessels is presented in this work. The review is focused on rigorous control approaches developed using planar autonomous surface vessel models over approximately the last two decades. The controllers are categorized into setpoint, trajectory tracking, and path following approaches with further classification into discontinuous and smooth time-varying control laws for the setpoint control approaches. An overview of the formulation, advantages, and disadvantages of each approach is presented. Although much progress has been made in autonomous underactuated surface vessel control, there remains a need for the evolution of these approaches to achieve robust, real-time control laws that can be implemented on actual autonomous Unmanned Surface Vessel (USV) platforms in the presence of high sea states and external disturbances in uncertain and unstructured environments.