ABSTRACT The proposed paper presents the design and development of the combined guidance and control strategies for the autonomous navigation of unmanned vessels characterised by azimuth-based thrust architecture. Autonomous marine vehicles (AMVs) are consolidated technological tools commonly employed for different tasks such as exploration, sampling and intervention. With the final aim of autonomous shipping, the AMVs capabilities have to be migrated and adapted towards the reliable and safe control of commercial-like unmanned vessels. These last are spreading thanks to a number of technological research projects. The employment of unconventional hull shapes combined with propulsive layout based on azimuth thrusters requires robust guidance techniques to provide precise and reliable motion control during navigation. The paper introduces a dual-loop guidance and control scheme able to provide advanced navigation capabilities. An inner control loop, devoted to the actuation of the azimuth thrusters, allows the tracking of reference course angle (namely the autopilot). Such a control loop is characterised by a modified PD regulation scheme, where a novel adaptive derivative component is inserted in order to improve the convergence curve towards the required course reference. The outer guidance loop, based on Lyapunov and virtual-target approach, allows the vessel to track generic desired paths, thus enhancing the autonomous navigation capabilities. The paper will provide a deep design and analysis approach for the developed techniques, as well as simulation results of the combined guidance and control scheme, proving the reliability of the proposed approach in different operative conditions.

中文翻译：

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基于方位推进器的自主船舶的自适应转向控制

摘要 本文提出了基于方位角推力架构的无人船自主导航的联合制导和控制策略的设计和开发。自主海洋车辆 (AMV) 是综合技术工具，通常用于不同的任务，如探索、采样和干预。为了实现自主航运的最终目标，AMV 的能力必须进行迁移和调整，以实现对类似商业的无人船舶的可靠和安全控制。由于许多技术研究项目，这些最后一项正在传播。使用非常规船体形状结合基于方位推进器的推进布局需要强大的制导技术，以在导航过程中提供精确可靠的运动控制。本文介绍了一种能够提供高级导航功能的双回路制导和控制方案。一个专门用于驱动方位推进器的内部控制回路允许跟踪参考航向角（即自动驾驶仪）。这种控制回路的特点是经过修改的 PD 调节方案，其中插入了一个新的自适应微分组件，以改善收敛曲线，以达到所需的路线参考。基于李雅普诺夫和虚拟目标方法的外引导回路允许船舶跟踪通用的所需路径，从而增强自主导航能力。本文将为所开发的技术提供深入的设计和分析方法，以及联合制导和控制方案的仿真结果，