A Strategy of Robust Control for the Dynamics of an Unmanned Surface Vehicle under Marine Waves and Currents

Abstract

This work addresses one of the most common problems for mobile robotics (autonomous navigation) but is applied to the dynamical model of a catamaran of small dimensions for monitoring and data acquisition applications. In this work, we present the study of the dynamics of a USV (Unmanned Surface Vehicle) under the presence of two simulated environmental perturbations: marine induced waves and currents. The mathematical model of the vehicle is studied and the equations that describe the behavior of environmental perturbations are also described. A numerical simulation of the model considering the effects of these perturbations is carried out in three degrees of freedom. Also, a strategy of robust control-based Sliding Mode Control (SMC) is developed for counteracting the effects of the perturbations over the trajectory of the USV.