Adaptive Filtering Backstepping for Ships Steering Control without Velocity Measurements and with Input Constraints

We consider the problem of course tracking for ships with uncertainties and unknown external disturbances, in the presence of input magnitude and rate saturation. The combination of approximation-based adaptive technique and radial basis function (RBF) neural network allows us to handle the unknown disturbances from the environment and uncertain ship dynamics. By employing the adaptive filtering backstepping, the full-state feedback controller is first derived. Then the output feedback controller is designed with the unmeasurable state estimated by using a high-gain observer. In order to cope with the input constraints, an auxiliary system is introduced to the output feedback controller, and the semiglobal uniform boundedness of the modified control solution is verified. Simulation results are presented for the course tracking of a cargo ship, which are demonstrative of the excellent performance of the proposed controller.