Heading Control of an Autonomous Surface Vehicle Using Finite-Time Approach

In this paper, an integral sliding mode control scheme is proposed for the heading control of an autonomous surface vehicle. Main contributions are as follows: 1) The proposed control scheme can not only make the vehicle converge to the desired heading but also guarantee finite-time convergence pertaining to the closed-loop system; 2) External disturbances can be accurately compensated by using the proposed disturbance observer, which leads to strong robustness; 3) By virtue of the proposed control scheme, fast and accurate heading control performance can be achieved. Simulation results are conducted to demonstrate the feasibility and remarkable performance of the proposed control scheme.