Global Robust Adaptive Trajectory Tracking Control for Surface Ships Under Input Saturation

In this paper, we investigate the trajectory tracking control problem of surface ships subject to unknown parameters, unknown time-varying disturbances, and input saturation. The input saturation is approximated using a Gaussian error function. The compounded uncertain term caused by the unknown parameters and disturbances is transformed into a linear parametric form with a single parameter called virtual parameter. Then, a novel robust adaptive ship trajectory tracking control law is designed using the adaptive vector-backstepping design method, where the adaptive law online provides the estimation of the virtual parameter. Further, a finite-time control scheme is developed injecting a power function vector of the position and velocity errors into the proposed control scheme such that the control performance is improved. Both our control schemes are simple to compute and easy to implement in engineering applications. Theoretical analysis indicates that the designed control laws can force the surface ship to track the desired trajectory while guaranteeing the global uniform ultimate boundedness of all the signals in the closed-loop trajectory tracking control system of surface ships. Simulation results and comparison verify the effectiveness of our novel robust adaptive trajectory tracking control schemes.