Practical Fixed-Time Output Feedback Trajectory Tracking Control for Marine Surface Vessels with Unknown Disturbances

This paper proposes a fixed-time output feedback trajectory tracking control scheme based on an extended state observer for marine surface vehicles (MSVs) with uncertain dynamics and unknown disturbances. The scheme utilizes a high-gain fixed-time extended state observer (HGFxESO) to estimate the reconstructed unmeasured velocities and lumped disturbances. The upper bound of the settling time of the HGFxESO is only determined by the design parameters, and the estimation errors can converge to a bounded set within a fixed time. Moreover, a novel fixed-time control law is proposed based on the backstepping technique and “adding a power integrator” (API) technique. The designed continuous control law ensures the trajectory tracking errors of MSVs converge to a neighborhood around the origin within a fixed time. The fixed-time stability of the MSVs trajectory tracking control system is proved using Lyapunov theory. Finally, simulation results are provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed control scheme.