A ship heading and speed control concept inherently satisfying actuator constraints

Satisfying actuator constraints is often not considered in the academic literature on the design of ship heading and speed controllers. This paper considers the use of a simplified dynamic window algorithm as a way to ensure that actuator constraints are satisfied. To accomplish this, we use the simplified dynamic window algorithm as a dynamic window-based controller (DWC) to guarantee that the velocities remain within a set of feasible boundaries, while simultaneously respecting the actuator constraints. We also develop a modified nonlinear ship model on which to test the proposed concept. The DWC is compared with a more traditional ship heading and speed controller, using performance metrics which consider both control accuracy and energy use.