HGESO-based disturbance rejection path following control for underactuated hovercrafts

Abstract

In this brief, a high gain extended observer (HGESO) based disturbance rejection yaw control law is proposed for path following of underactuated hovercrafts in the presence of unknown nonlinear time-varying uncertainties. First, a HGESO is first proposed to estimate the unknown nonlinear time-varying uncertainties for the underactuated hovercraft heading subsystem. Then, a HGESO-based backstepping yaw control law is designed to achieve the disturbance rejection yaw control for underactuated hovercrafts. Furthermore, the stability of the proposed control method is proven by the input-state-stability theory. Finally, a simulation case study of an underactuated hovercraft is made to support the proposed control law.