Fuzzy-Approximator-Based Adaptive Controller Design for Ship Course-Keeping Steering in Strict-Feedback Forms

Abstract: Along with increasing marine transportation and logistics, the ship autopilot has become much important not only to lower the seaman's operating intensions, but also to reduce the seaman's deployment. It is still a challenge to design ship course-keeping controller because of ship's uncertain dynamics and time-varying environmental disturbance. This study focuses on backstepping adaptive course-keeping controller design for ship autopilot. Takagi-Sugeno (T-S) fuzzy approximator can formulate ship motion's uncertainties. Therefore, the proposed controller has no need of a priori knowledge about ship's system dynamics. Command filter can bypass the iterative differential manipulations in conventional ship course adaptive backstepping controller. The design can guarantee the ultimate uniform boundedness of the signals in closed-loop system. Finally, simulation study verifies the efficiency of the ship course-keeping design.