Weather optimal area-keeping control for underactuated autonomous surface vehicle with input time-delay

The problem of the underactuated Autonomous Surface Vehicle (ASV) area-keeping control under unknown slow time-varying external environment disturbances and input time-delay, an integral time-delay sliding mode control algorithm based on weather optimal intermittent strategy is proposed in this article. Firstly, integral time-delay sliding mode control law is constructed, with controller parameters chosen according to the upper bound of time-delay. In the control law, a geometric updating rule is designed for the virtual suspension point, which enables ASV at a particular small area with a weather optimal heading. And, weather optimal intermittent strategy is developed to extend the area-keeping control method, while reducing ASV energy consumption. Besides, the closed-loop system is globally asymptotically stable through Lyapunov-Krasovskii analysis. Finally, the performance of the proposed algorithm is illustrated through the simulation examples.