Safety-Certificated Line-of-Sight Guidance of Unmanned Surface Vehicles for Straight-Line Following in a Constrained Water Region Subject to Ocean Currents

Abstract

The collision-free straight-line following of an unmanned surface vehicle (USV) moving in a constrained water region subject to stationary and moving obstacles is addressed in this paper. USV systems are normally subjected to surge velocity constraints, yaw rate constraints, and unknown ocean currents. Herein, a safety-certificated line-of-sight (LOS) guidance method is proposed to achieve a constrained straight-line following task. First, an antidisturbance LOS guidance law is designed based on the LOS guidance scheme and an extended state observer. Furthermore, collision avoidance with waterway boundaries and stationary/moving obstacles is encoded in control barrier functions, utilizing which the safety constraints are transformed into input constraints. Finally, safety-certificated guidance signals are obtained by solving a quadratic programming problem subject to input constraints. Using the proposed safety-certified LOS guidance method, the USV can accomplish a straight-line following task with guaranteed input-to-state safety. Simulation results substantiate the efficacy of the proposed safety-certificated LOS guidance method for the straight-line following of USVs moving in a constrained water region subject to unknown ocean currents.

Keywords

Line-of-sight guidance / Constrained water region / Unmanned surface vehicle / Control barrier function / Extended state observer

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