Design and Implement a Fuzzy Autopilot for an Unmanned Surface Vessel

Abstract

Autopilot system are valuable for many applications, such as: oceanographic, military purposes, maritime transport… which offer greater self-adaptive capacity, and cost-effectiveness compared to traditional systems. Especially, this is a common and an essential problem for Unmanned Surface Vessel (USV) due to the non-linearity of the system and the changing environmental conditions. The vessel’s parameters is determined by using Kempf’s method. This paper focus on design, modelling and simulation a Fuzzy heading control for an USV. The heading deviation and rate of heading deviation are treated as Fuzzy inputs and the rudder angle command is the Fuzzy output. The Fuzzy-controller for USV is verified by Matlab simulation and experimental. The archived results confirm the heading control’s effectiveness using Fuzzy controller.