Adaptive Steering of Boat using Model Reference Approach

摘要

The development of ship steering autopilot is the field that control theories have been applied much earlier and achieved good results. Variations in the steering characteristics of a ship necessitate adjustment of autopilot settings. The PD controller with fixed design parameters is a conventional autopilot system. Such controller can be made to work well for particular operating conditions, but its performance will become weak if these conditions vary. Model reference adaptive control systems perform the adjustment of parameters automatically. In this paper, the constant gain PD controller and Model Reference Adaptive system (MRAS) controllers are adopted as the autopilot systems on a model boat. The main advantage of MRAS controller is controlling the parameters through online, which yields safer operation, reduced time and decreased fuel cost. Performance of MRAS controller is compared against constant gain feedback controller for the similar test runs.