Combined yaw and roll control of an autonomous boat

In this paper we try to develop a host-based system and study actual sea trials via rudder based roll control method. To authors´ best knowledge, the boat we investigated is the smallest among those reported in the literature. An autonomous boat model is obtained by a system identification approach. The identified system is designed with frequency-shaped sliding mode control. The control scheme is composed of a sliding mode observer and a sliding mode controller. The stability and reachability of the switching function are proved by Lyapunov theory. Computer simulations and experiment show that successful course keeping and roll reduction results are achieved.