Network-Based Line-of-Sight Path Tracking of Underactuated Unmanned Surface Vehicles With Experiment Results

This article deals with the problem of network-based path-tracking control of an underactuated unmanned surface vehicle subject to model uncertainties and unknown disturbances over a wireless network. A two-level network-based control architecture is proposed, including a local inner loop and a remote outer loop. In the remote outer loop, an event-triggered line-of-sight guidance law is designed to achieve path tracking while reducing the network burden for the remote control at the kinematic level. In the local inner loop, an extended state observer is employed to estimate the unknown disturbances due to the model uncertainties and environmental disturbances. Based on the estimated information from the extended state observer, an event-triggered anti-disturbance control law is developed to reduce the execution rate of actuators at the kinetic level. The stability of the closed-loop path-tracking system is proved based on the input-to-state stability and cascade stability theory. The effectiveness of the proposed network-based method for path tracking of the USV is verified via experiments.