Novel adaptive law for super-twisting controller: USV tracking control under disturbances

A novel adaptive super-twisting control algorithm, for Unmanned Surface Vehicles (USV) tracking control is presented. The proposed adaptive law is obtained using a Lyapunov approach, to analyze the system closed-loop stability. Furthermore, several conditions are given to guarantee robustness in presence of unknown bounded disturbances/uncertainties, chattering mitigation and the finite-time convergence. This adaptive control strategy has the advantage that the controller gains, which are in terms of a single control parameter, requires adjusting a small number of parameters compared with other adaptive strategies, moreover and its dynamics is smooth, improving the controller performance. To assess the proposed control methodology effectiveness, a trajectory tracking control is designed and implemented on an unmanned surface vehicle under the action of bounded unknown uncertainties and external perturbations. Numerical simulations and experimental results conducted with a vessel prototype demonstrate the performance and advantages under payload variations and external environmental conditions. Finally, a comparative study between the proposed approach with other adaptive super-twisting works has been conducted. •A novel adaptive gain is designed for the super-twisting controller, reducing the number of tuning parameters.•A trajectory tracking control for an unmanned surface vehicle under perturbations validates the proposed method.•Reduced parameters of the adaptive gain provides a smooth rate of change and does not require sliding mode detector.•Experimental results demonstrates the performance and feasibility of the proposed adaptive super twisting controller.