Design and modeling of Unmanned Trimaran Surface Vehicles

The design, development, modeling and sea trials of the unmanned Trimaran surface vehicles (UTSV) are presented in this paper. Hardware and sensors for navigation, localization and obstacle avoidance was developed. Sensors were chosen to provide the necessary data for an autonomous controller for control design, six DOF dynamic modeling of autonomous Trimarans is presented. The detailed mathematical modeling is intended to provide the appropriate framework for a control design which explicitly addressed the six DOF UTSV dynamics. A control system was developed based on backstepping to guide the vessel to track desired trajectories based on the input of the sensors. Physical experiments were conducted to determine the maneuvering property of UTSV.