abstract
- This article addresses a robust control design with a tunable settling time for an unmanned surface vehicle subject to external disturbances and uncertainties. The proposed strategy is based on two layers, a guidance and a low level control, both formulated based on adaptive integral terminal sliding mode technique, which is robust against bounded perturbations with unknown bounds and attenuates the chattering effect without overestimating the control gains. The proposed approach achieves practical finite-time convergence of the surface vehicle to track desired trajectories in the presence of perturbations within an assigned settling time. Furthermore, stability in the Lyapunov sense of guidance and control is proven. Simulations using wind, wave, and water current models as disturbances and field experiments conducted on a physical platform subject to perturbations and uncertainties show the performance and advantages. Finally, for further demonstration, the proposed control scheme is compared with current and existing techniques.