Adaptive Fuzzy Sliding-Mode Control for Ship Path Tracking Based on a Fixed-Time Disturbance Observer

We propose a control method that integrates adaptive fuzzy sliding-mode control (AF-SMC) with a fixed-time disturbance observer (FTDO) to address modeling errors, external disturbances, and input saturation in ship path tracking. The designed adaptive fuzzy system dynamically adjusts the SMC gain to enhance adaptability to parameter variations and modeling errors. Furthermore, the proposed method enables rapid estimation of the total uncertainty term by incorporating an FTDO, ensuring fixed-time estimation and feedforward compensation of the total matched uncertainty without requiring prior knowledge of the disturbance bound. Lyapunov stability analysis was employed to verify the bounded stability of the closed-loop system. Simulation results indicate that the proposed method provides high control accuracy and robustness.