Trajectory tracking control of unmanned surface vehicles with resilient prescribed performance: A proportional constraint feedback approach

This paper is concerned with the problem of trajectory tracking control for underactuated unmanned surface vehicles (USVs) subject to resilient performance constraints. A novel set of compensation signals derived from error supervision is designed and integrated into the backstepping-based tracking framework, thereby enabling dynamic adjustment of constraint boundaries in response to tracking errors in scenarios beyond collision avoidance. Subsequently, a pair of proportional feedback control laws free of adaptive approximation is derived based on full-error constraint concept. Particularly, the velocity tracking errors are transformed through a combination of mapping and barrier functions, which renders the controller completely independent of the initial-value assumption while being singularity-free. Using Lyapunov direct method, it is rigorously demonstrated that all closed-loop signals remain globally uniformly ultimately bounded. In the end, numerical simulations confirm the above theoretical findings. • The proposed control scheme is free of complicated adaptive approximation tools. • The proposed control law takes a purely proportional feedback form based on BFs. • The initial-value assumption on the velocity tracking errors is thoroughly relaxed. • The proposed resilient method applies to multiple cases owing to error supervisory.