Design and Test of an Experimental Platform for Unmanned Surface Vessel

Abstract

This paper establishes an unmanned surface vessel (USV) experimental platform for different mission requirements and research experiments. The experimental platform consists of software and hardware parts. The hardware part includes its electronic control system, communication system and propulsion system. The software part includes a software system based on the Robot Operating System (ROS) framework and a simulation platform based on Gazebo. This paper proposed a robust type2-fuzzy logic (T2FLS) controller to tackle system uncertainties and external disturbances, and the simulation results show the feasibility and effectiveness of this algorithm. The designed control algorithm is verified using a Gazebo implementation in the frame of ROS. This paper developed a Gazebo simulation platform which can debug the control algorithm, simulate the marine environment, and establish an ocean current interference model. Since the input and output interfaces in the simulation environment are consistent with the existing USV system, the actual USV experiment can be carried out directly after the simulation with no code conversion and other operations, thus simplifying the work and speeding up the experiment progress.