Experimental validation of marine craft heading keeping considering modeling uncertainty and actuator dead-zone

This paper investigates marine craft heading keeping subject to model uncertainty, actuator dynamics, and dead-zone. First, a simplified heading dynamics model of marine craft is constructed for heading keeping. Second, an adaptive fuzzy sliding mode controller (AFSMC) with a thin boundary layer is developed for heading keeping of marine craft. The adaptive fuzzy logic obtains a better approximation precision of uncertainty; a thin boundary layer reduces the chattering effect with saturation function. Third, the dead-zone effect is compensated by reconstructing the breakpoints. Finally, experimental validation in a water tank illustrates the effectiveness and outperformance of AFSMC compared to the proportional integral differential controller.