Research on discontinuous guidance and hardware-in-the-loop simulation for unmanned underwater vehicle

Based on the application of important water area blockade, a new discontinuous guidance approach of an unmanned underwater vehicle (UUV) perpendicularly towards side of surface ship is proposed, and a hardware-in-the-loop simulation (HILS) system is established to demonstrate this guidance approach. This approach can be described as follows: a near-surface straight trajectory which is perpendicular to the predicted ship trajectory is figured out by detection device of UUV which is hidden underwater after the ship target is located. When the horizontal distance between UUV and the ship target meets start-up condition, UUV climbs to a certain depth near the sea surface and then runs along the horizontal straight trajectory. During its motion, UUV periodically measures the sight line between the UUV and ship target. In order to restrain the horizontal rotation of the sight line, a discontinuous guidance approach is proposed by using the deviation of the two adjacent sight lines and the distance between the UUV and the ship target to adjust the UUV’s velocity. After certain times of adjustment of the UUV’s velocity, UUV impacts the side of ship target perpendicularly with required accuracy. This near-surface discontinuous guidance approach makes it possible for UUV to be guided through optical or radar detection. Further discussions are made including miss distance caused by this proposed guidance approach, cycle of sight line detection, UUV’s non-attack zone and UUV start-up condition. Finally, a set of HILS is carried out to demonstrate the performance of the discontinuous guidance approach on an experimentally validated UUV model.