Development and field testing of an unmanned surface vehicle system for guidance control and target tracking

This article addresses the tracking problem of unmanned surface vehicles (USVs) under high-speed and changing heading targets, using a high-speed boat as the experimental platform. A single neuron PID controller is introduced as the underlying control system to facilitate the rapid deployment of the USV and achieve precise control of its speed and yaw angle. Furthermore, the Vector Field Integrated Line-of-Sight (VFILOS) controller is combined with a Dubins path generator to enable continuous guidance control of curved geometric trajectories. To evaluate the tracking performance of the USV on static, dynamic, low-speed, and high-speed targets, outdoor lake experiments are conducted. In waypoint tracking experiments, the USV successfully reaches the designated waypoints and docks within a square area of 20 m on each side. During tracking experiments of fixed heading navigation and rapidly maneuvering surface targets with time-varying headings, the maximum target speed reaches 21 meters per second. The USV can maintain continuous tracking within a safe distance range of 100 to 150 meters based on information from radar input. The experimental results confirm the feasibility of the hardware and software modifications to the high-speed USV and highlight the potential of unmanned boats for tracking unmanned targets, providing a foundation for future research.