Sliding mode control of ACV heading tracking based on backstepping

Resistances exert on the hull is changing erratically when an air cushion vehicle (ACV) sailing. So it is necessary to study nonlinear control means for amphibious hovercraft course control. A nonlinear controller based on backstepping algorithm and sliding mode control algorithm was proposed in this paper. The system consists of the nonlinear ship response model. By means of Lyapunov function, it was theoretically proven that the proposed controller makes all states of resulting closed-loop system uniformly bounded and stabilized. In the results of simulation, the set heading can adaptively followed by actual heading output of the hovercraft motion nonlinear system, which shows that the designed controller possesses the advantages of good transient performance, static performance and robustness to uncertainties for the tracking of periodic reference trajectories..