Path Planning and Adaptive Controller Development for Ship-To-Ship Guided Missiles

This study presents an integrated guidance, control, and trajectory planning architecture for a ship-to-ship guided missile designed to counter actively maneuvering enemy surface combatants. A high-speed guided missile is modeled with nonlinear six-degrees-of-freedom (6-DoF) dynamics, while the target performs evasive maneuvers. The target’s velocity is estimated via a Kalman filter and used to generate a dynamically updated reference trajectory. Feasible trajectories are obtained using an A*-based algorithm and refined through polynomial smoothing to ensure continuity. Reference attitude angles are derived from Line-of-Sight (LOS) geometry and tracked using LQR, LQI, and a modified MRAC controller. The controllers are designed based on a trim condition and corresponding linearized model, and then applied to the full nonlinear system. A Luenberger observer is used for missile state estimation, while the Kalman filter provides robust target estimation under noise. Simulation results over 40 scenarios show that LQR provides low control effort, LQI reduces steady-state error, and the modified MRAC achieves the lowest RMS error and miss distance. The proposed architecture offers a robust and accurate solution for highly maneuvering targets.