Robust adaptive manoeuvering control of an autonomous surface vessel in the presence of ocean currents and parametric model uncertainty

This chapter considers the problem of path-following control of autonomous surface vessels in the presence of ocean currents and parametric model uncertainty. The problem at hand consists of steering a vehicle surface ship along a geometric path with a desired speed profile. The Lyapunov technique is used to derive a robust architecture. To ensure path-following of the surface vessel, robust controller is designed based on adaptive sliding mode control in combination with the radial basis function neural network (RBFNN) to suppress the effect of parameter variations and external disturbances. Closed-loop tracking errors are shown to be asymptotically stable. Simulation results show that the proposed control algorithm attains a satisfied performance and is robust against parameter variations and external disturbances.