Vector Field-Guided Circumnavigation for an Unmanned Surface Vehicle With Boundary and Obstacle Constraints
Nailong Wu, Jigang Wang, Yueying Wang, Shuping He · IEEE Transactions on Emerging Topics in Computing · 2025
This article aims to tackle the challenge of rapid target circumnavigation by unmanned surface vehicles (USVs) under boundary and obstacle constraints through leveraging an emerging computing architecture specifically tailored for unmanned systems. Owing to the underactuation of USV dynamic systems and the presence of various time-varying surface disturbances, attaining rapid and accurate position control along with maneuverability poses a significant challenge to USVs. Therefore, when an USV maneuvers around a target in a confined search area with obstacles, it is essential for the guidance law to consider collision risks and environmental disturbances. This paper proposes a modified Lyapunov vector field with heading deviation compensation to circle the target in complex search regions. The vector field is designed to increase the radial velocity of the USV and accelerate convergence towards the target circle during the pursuit phase. By combining the proposed Lyapunov vector field with a boundary vector field, the USV can swiftly avoid boundaries and dynamic obstacles and then continue circling the target. The proposed computing architecture extends the application scope of the target circumnavigation to practical water surface environments, which is validated by extensive simulations and rigorous experiments.