Linear Event-Triggered Fault-Tolerant Control for Unmanned Surface Vehicles: Improving Maritime Safety for Sustainable Transportation

Unmanned Surface Vehicles (USVs) are pivotal in maritime applications such as environmental monitoring, maritime surveillance, and offshore operations. However, their underactuated nature and vulnerability to actuator faults pose significant challenges to achieving reliable and efficient control. This paper presents a Linear Event-Triggered Fault-Tolerant Control (LET-FTC) strategy designed to maintain satisfactory performance under rudder fault conditions while mitigating risks of instability. The proposed control framework employs a coupled control mechanism, dynamically combining controller outputs to generate effective thrust and yaw forces, thereby ensuring accurate trajectory tracking even with degraded rudder functionality. An event-triggered mechanism optimizes communication and computational resources, contributing to operational efficiency and resilience. The LET-FTC strategy aligns with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 11 (SDG 11) by enhancing the sustainability, safety, and resilience of USVs in dynamic and fault-prone environments, thereby contributing to sustainable cities and communities. By ensuring robust performance under rudder fault conditions, the strategy supports improved maritime operations essential for urban coastal areas, such as transportation, environmental monitoring, and disaster response. Simulation results validate the effectiveness of the proposed framework, emphasizing its ability to improve reliability, energy efficiency, and fault tolerance.