Real-time Path Planning and Control of the Unmanned Surface Vessel for Target Tracking and Obstacle Avoidance

In the scenario of tracking the target in vast sea areas by the unmanned surface vessel, a new target tracking method is proposed by combining the pure pursuit method, the improved interfered fluid dynamic system, and model predictive control. Firstly, the second-order response model and the steering gear model of the unmanned surface vessel are established. Then, to complete the task of tracking the moving target while avoiding static or dynamic obstacles, adaptive parameters are introduced into the traditional interfered fluid dynamic system. Furthermore, the improved algorithm is combined with the pure pursuit method to plan a collision-free path. Finally, the external disturbances suffered by the unmanned surface vessel are simplified as disturbances at the steering gear, and a disturbance observer is introduced based on model predictive control to improve the anti-disturbance ability of the system. Numerical simulation experiments verify the effectiveness of the proposed method.