Path following of underactuated surface vessels based active disturbance rejection control considering lateral drift

To address the challenges posed by unmodeled dynamics, lateral drift, external disturbances, and the difficulty in measuring velocities in underactuated surface vessels (USVs) motion systems, an active disturbance rejection control (ADRC) with two linear extended state observers (LESO) is proposed for USV path following. Firstly, we employ the Backstepping technique to create a virtual heading angle while estimating lateral drift and unmodeled dynamics using LESO. Subsequently, the ADRC algorithm is employed to control the heading angle. Since measuring the velocities of USV is challenging, velocity observers are introduce to estimate surge and sway velocities. Finally, we utilize the MMG model with high precision to track straight-line and curved paths, respectively. Simulation results validate that our developed controller accurately follows the reference path even in the presence of disturbances, affirming the effectiveness of our proposed control strategy.