A Combined Heading Controller with Line Following Approach for Self-Steering an Autonomous Surface Vehicle

Autopilots are widely used in modern marine crafts; they can help skippers maneuvering their vehicles as desired. The wind and marine current forces can cause large drift angles and make the vehicle to move away from the planned path. To remedy this predicament, the autopilot based on a course controller is designed instead of a heading controller. This paper presents an approach for course controlling based on a nonlinear heading controller combined with a line following algorithm, which are designed using Lyapunov theory. The proposed autopilot is developed according to a boat dynamic model with three degrees of freedom which is inspired from Fossen's model. Simulation results were shown to prove the effectiveness of the designed control approach but only the developed heading controller is validated via experimental tests to prove its effectiveness.