Adaptive backstepping fast terminal sliding mode control of dynamic positioning ships with uncertainty and unknown disturbances

Considering the complexity of the operating environment of marine ships, higher demands are placed on the positioning accuracy and positioning performance of Dynamic Positioning (DP) systems. This paper designs an Adaptive Backstepping Fast Terminal Sliding Mode Control (ABFTSMC) to solve the problems of low positioning accuracy, slow convergence, and poor anti-interference performance in ship positioning due to uncertainty of dynamic model parameters and unknown time-varying environmental disturbances. A Fast Terminal Sliding Mode Control (FTSMC) is combined with backstepping techniques to ensure the robustness of the system to uncertainties and disturbances. Meanwhile, an adaptive law is used to estimate the unknown uncertainty terms. Moreover, the Lyapunov stability criterion is used to prove the convergence and stability of the designed controller. Multiple simulation results show that ABFTSMC has better control performance compared with Adaptive Backstepping Control (ABC) and Adaptive Backstepping Sliding Mode Control (ABSMC). All the comparisons could fully verify the effectiveness and superiority of the proposed control method.