Line-of-Sight Path Following for Dubins Paths With Adaptive Sideslip Compensation of Drift Forces

We present a nonlinear adaptive path following controller that compensates for drift forces through vehicle sideslip. Vehicle sideslip arises during path following when the vehicle is subject to drift forces caused by ocean currents, wind, and waves. The proposed algorithm is motivated by a line-of-sight (LOS) guidance principle used by ancient navigators, which is here extended to path following of Dubins paths. The unknown sideslip angle is treated as a constant parameter, which is estimated using an adaptation law. The equilibrium points of the cross-track and parameter estimation errors are proven to be uniformly semiglobally exponentially stable. This guarantees that the estimated sideslip angle converges…