A Local Control Network Autopilot for an Unmanned Surface Vehicle

Although marine craft are renowned for their nonlinear dynamic behaviour, autopilot system designs are still being developed based on linear control methodologies. Thus to overcome any limitations in the performance capabilities of such systems, it is appropriate to consider designing nonlinear autopilots. This paper reports an investigation into a novel approach to marine control systems design based on local control network (LCN) techniques. The approach is used to design an autopilot for controlling the nonlinear yaw dynamics of an unmanned surface vehicle and is benchmarked against another based on a standard proportional-integral-derivative controller. Simulation results are presented and the performances of the autopilots are compared using standard system performance criteria. From the results it can be observed that the LCN is more efficient compared to the PID controller. Also it out performs its PID counterpart in terms of the selected criteria. Copyright © 2012 IFAC