An Optimal Control Method for an Autonomous Surface Vessel for Environment Monitoring and Cargo Transportation Applications

The effective computer control of autonomous airborne, waterborne, and ground vehicles has become an important issue in the development of Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS), Industry 4.0 systems, Smart City environments and other applications where autonomous vehicles are used. Besides extensive research of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), the study of Autonomous Surface Vessels (ASVs) has been more than 10 times less intensive. Paper discusses control mathematics of a highly nonlinear model of 200 kg weight class ASV corresponding approximately to the real ASV `Nymo' developed at Tallinn University of Technology. Simulations in Simulink/MATLAB environment demonstrate that the offered optimized nonlinear controller is capable to assure remarkably better stabilization of heading angle than previously studied neural controller. The comparison of simulation results for three types of heading angle controllers (basic proportional, neural predictive controller of Simulink/MATLAB environment and offered nonlinear controller) is given.