Fuzzy Sliding Mode Control for Unmanned Surface Vehicles with Input Saturation and Dead Zones

In this paper, an adaptive fuzzy sliding mode control (SMC) method is proposed for unmanned surface vehicles (USVs). The proposed controller can deal with the input constraints of USVs, including saturation and dead zones. All input constraints can be estimated using the fuzzy update mechanism. Specifically, an SMC strategy is designed to compensate for the inaccuracies in fuzzy approximation. The stability analysis is conducted to confirm that the tracking errors can converge within a confined range in a finite time. Simulation results are presented to validate the efficacy of the proposed approach.