Implementation of an integrated navigation, guidance and control system for an unmanned surface vehicle

In this paper, an integrated navigation, guidance and control system of an unmanned surface vehicle (USV) is implemented. Main contributions are as follows: 1) Aiming to obtain precise heading estimation, Kalman filter technique that can combine predictions from designed model with actual sensor measurements is adopted in navigation system; 2) The line-of-sight (LOS) with a time-varying lookahead distance is employed in guidance system. Remarkably, a novel arc transition strategy is proposed such that the vehicle can turn around smoothly when completing the way-point guidance mission; 3) In addition, strong robustness to dynamic characteristics is enhanced by employing a fuzzy PID controller. Finally, simulation studies and field experiments demonstrate remarkable performance of the integrated USV system.