Modeling and Identification of an Unmanned Surface Vehicle Based on Sea Trials Data

This paper describes a simplified method to modeling and parameters identification of an Unmanned surface vehicle USV. The USV is propelled by two thrusters allowing both control of speed and heading. The outputs of the studied system are variables that characterize the kinematics and the motion of the USV such as the speed, the heading, and the position in the horizontal plan. First a nonlinear model with three degrees of freedom is designed, then the parameters are calculated based on sea trials data. Finally the model is validated by simulation in order to perform some control methods in a future work.