Event-triggered sliding mode tracking control of autonomous surface vehicles

This paper is concerned with an event-triggered sliding mode control (SMC) scheme for trajectory tracking in autonomous surface vehicles (ASVs). First, an event-triggered variable that consists of tracking error, desired trajectory and exogenous input of the reference system is introduced to decrease the magnitude of the robust SMC term. Then, the reaching conditions of the designed event-triggered sliding mode are established. Moreover, the event-triggered induced errors that exist in the rotation matrix of the ASV are analyzed. In the presence of parameter uncertainties and external disturbances, the proposed event-triggered SMC scheme can ensure the control accuracy and low-frequency actuator updates. Then both actuator wear and energy consumption of the actuators can be reduced comparing with the traditional time-triggered controller. The proposed controller not only guarantees uniform ultimate boundedness of the tracking error but also ensures non-accumulation of inter-execution times. The results are illustrated through simulation examples.