Unmanned Surface Vehicle Heading and Speed Control Method Based on Model Predictive Control

Abstract

In order to improve the accuracy and robustness of Unmanned Surface Vehicle (USV) heading and speed control in outdoor lake environment, a heading and speed control method based on Model Predictive Control (MPC) has been proposed. First, a heading prediction model and a speed prediction model have been established according to the nonlinear kinematic model of the USV; then, the MPC algorithm has been applied to the USV heading and speed control problem, and the heading and speed controller have been designed according to the objective function and constraints defined by the heading and speed errors; finally, we have conducted a heading tracking experiment with the USV under actual lake environment. The results show that compared with the PID control method, the MPC control method reduces the heading angle overshoot by about 33.41%, increases the average speed by about 4.4%, and reduces the energy consumption by about 24.43%.