Development of a Multi-purpose Unmanned Surface Vehicle and Simulation Comparison of Path Tracking Methods

Abstract

Recently, a number of unmanned surface vehicles (USVs) have been developed and researched for various fields such as military, environment and robotics. These vehicles are used as an application platform of diverse algorithms. This paper introduces a development of a multi-purpose USV "eVe-1". Also, several path tracking methods are compared by using simulation. The hardware of "eVe-1" is designed as a catamaran. It consists of power system, control system, various sensors, and two thrusters. Functions of the software are collecting sensor data, processing algorithms for a mission, and transmitting information for remote control. Three tracking methods for navigation of USV are compared with each other: approximate linearization, input/output linearization, and nonlinear control. We carried out simulation of path tracking and experiment to demonstrate the performance of "eVe-1".