Safe trajectory tracking control for underactuated USVs via CLF‐CBF‐based quadratic program

Abstract This paper intends to investigate the safety tracking control of the underactuated unmanned surface vehicles (USVs). The control synthesis is decomposed into position and force/torque two nested control loops based on the hierarchical control approach. To enable USVs to avoid obstacles encountered on the reference path during the voyage, we first design a safety‐mediated position controller by employing control barrier functions and control Lyapunov functions based quadratic program (QP). Then, the position controller provides the desired velocities which serve as the reference signals in the inner loop. To avoid using the derivatives of the desired velocities, tracking differentiators are applied to design the final force and torque controllers. Finally, the performance of the proposed scheme is illustrated by a simulation study.