Design and Realization of USV Experiment Platform

An unmanned surface vessel (USV) platform that could realize the ship course-keeping [1] experiment is proposed in this paper. Integrated the high-precision Global Positioning System (GPS) into the USV platform, the high accuracy position and USV dynamics data could be obtained. Then a steering controller for course-keeping control based on the Proportional-Derivative (PD) [2] control strategy is tried to control the USV platform on the given course. Finally, the course-keeping experiment results illustrate that the proposed USV could be utilized as a platform for USV intelligent collision avoidance and other advanced USV controller experiments. Introduction In recent years, the research of Unmanned Surface Vessel (USV) [3] has attracted a lot of scholars attention, because it contains a huge amount of potential in various practical engineering applications. The USV is a complicated system, and it is divided into hardware module and software module. In terms of hardware module, what is most important is how to obtain the attitude and position data from the sensors that installed on the vessel. This paper uses the high precision Global Positioning System (GPS) module as the attitude sensor to get USV real-time attitude data, and then storage the data into the database that established by SQL Server. On the other hand, if the computer deployed on the shore has connected to the internet, anyone who has the account and password could access the USV attitude data at any place where there is a network. While the vessel is being tested on the sea, it is very convenient for us to monitor the vessel, and collect the navigation data at the same time. The course-keeping is the fundamental function of USV and it can be used in various field of the USV motion control engineering. Especially in the constrained water areas, the more precise ship course-keeping performance is, the more safety the USV can embrace. In this study, steering controller [4] based on proportional-derivative (PD) strategy was adopted as a tool to control the smart USV on the given course. The smart USV is equipped with a very high precision GPS receiver and wireless radio communication system to identify its positions. The Introduction of the USV Experiment Platform The platform includes two parts, hardware module and software module. The overview of the USV is shown in Fig. 1. Figure 1. The overview of the USV International Conference on Modeling, Analysis, Simulation Technologies and Applications (MASTA 2019) Copyright © 2019, the Authors. Published by Atlantis Press. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/). Advances in Intelligent Systems Research, volume 168