IJCAS

Consider the course-tracking control issue of ships with the dynamic parameter uncertainties, unknown time-varying ocean environment disturbance, and input delay. This paper creates a novel ship course-tracking control solution scheme under a uniformed framework such that the ship course tracks the desired course. Therein, an extended state predictor observer (ESPO) is constructed to estimate the course and the yaw rate of ships as well as the total disturbance caused by ship dynamic parameter uncertainties and unknown time-varying environment disturbance at the future instants, and whereby eventually contributes to compensating both the input delay and the total disturbance. Theoretical analyses indicate that our developed ship course-tracking control law with ESPO achieves the uniform stability of ship course-tracking closed-loop control system. Simulation results and simulation comparisons on a frigate demonstrate the effectiveness and superiority of our developed control law for ships with input delay.

Keywords: Dynamic parameter uncertainties, extended state predictor observer, input delay, ship course-tracking, unknown time-varying ocean environment disturbance.