Fault-Tolerant Control of Autonomous Surface Vessels Subject to Steer Jamming for Harbor Returning

Steering jam is a common fault of autonomous surface vessels (ASVs) frequently encountered in practical operations. In such a scenario, the allowable ASV moving direction is confined to a narrow zone, which inevitably induces technical challenges for harbor-returning operations of ASVs. As a remedy, we propose a moving-direction fault-tolerant control method for steering jammed ASVs to return to harbors autonomously. We derive sufficient conditions to guarantee the asymptotical stability of the closed-loop ASV system. We elaborate on experimental results on a HUSTER-16 platform established by us to substantiate the effectiveness of the proposed method.