Adaptive Coordinated Path Following Control of USVs for Offshore Oil Spill Surveillance*

Offshore Oil spill pollution is a serious threat to marine environments, an adaptive coordinated path following control problem for offshore oil spill surveillance of unmanned surface vehicles (USVs) is studied in this paper. Firstly, the kinematic model of USVs is established by using a fixed coordinate system and a body coordinate system, and the path following error model of USVs is built in the basic coordinate system; Secondly, an variable look-ahead distance is introduced into the traditional line of sight (LOS) guidance law, and an adaptive line of sight (ALOS) guidance law is constructed, such that an adaptive coordinated path following controller is proposed to achieve the task of offshore oil spill surveillance effectively; Finally, the stability of the proposed control system is proved by Lyapunov stability theory. Simulation results are provided to substantiate the effectiveness of the proposed adaptive coordinated path following controller of USVs for offshore oil spill surveillance.