Fault-Tolerant Motion Control for Catamaran Under Single Hull Failure

Abstract

In real maritime applications of autonomous surface vehicles (ASVs), the frequent occurrence of single propeller failure of catamaran ASVs is a common issue. In such a scenario, maintaining a stable ASV heading becomes challenging as just one propeller is operational. To address this issue, we propose a zigzag control strategy and thereby design a fault-tolerant trajectory tracking algorithm for catamaran ASVs suffered by a single-hull failure. Significantly, sufficient conditions are derived to guarantee the asymptotic stability of the closed-loop control system governed by the present zigzag control law. Finally, real lake-based experiments are conducted on a self-established HUSTER-12C catamaran ASV to verify the effectiveness of the proposed zigzag controller.