Dynamic event-triggered adaptive tracking control of UMSVs with internal and external uncertainties

This work discusses the adaptive control problem of the underactuated marine surface vehicles (UMSVs) under internal and external uncertainties. To solve the design problem derived from the underactuated feature, the virtual input approach is introduced, and then a level integral cascade form of the UMSVs’ motion model is established. On this basis, under the vectorized backstepping design framework, the uncertain parameters and external disturbances are linearly characterized. Using parameter adaptive technique, adaptive update laws are designed to update the unknown model parameters as well as upper bound of disturbance; meanwhile, to reduce the actuator mechanical wear, a dynamic event-triggered protocol (DETP) is designed in the controller–actuator channel. As a result, a novel DETP-based adaptive control solution is proposed. Compared with the existing work, the main characteristics of the proposed control solution include: (1) the proposed control solution depends only on the state information of the system; (2) the virtual input approach is extended into the model-free scenario; (3) the actuator mechanical wear is inhibited. The theoretical results indicates that the boundedness of all signals in the closed-loop control system of UMSVs can be guaranteed. The effectiveness of the control solution is verified by simulation tests.