2nd International Conference on Advances in Mechanical Engineering and Industrial Informatics (AMEII 2016)

Design of Unmanned Surface Vessels Experiment Platform

Changshun WANG

School of Information Science and Electric Engineering, Shandong Jiaotong University, Jinan,
250357, China
Email: shun841030@163.com
Key words: Unmanned Surface Vessels, USV, Experiment Platform, Course Tracking

Abstract: In recent years, More and more attention has been paid to Unmanned Surface Vessels
motion control field. An experimental platform for USV based on wireless communication was
introduced for USV motion control algorithm experiments in this paper. The structure and
implementation of experimental platform was described in detail. Stability and reliability tests for
experimental platform were carried out by following an circular path, and the USV state data in
sailing was analyzed by drawing tools in MATLAB. Experimental results show that the platform
can complete algorithm validation experiments accurately.

Introduction
In recent years, Unmanned Surface Vessels(USV) has played an important role in search and rescue,
marine environmental exploration, oceanographic research and marine rights due to its advantages
such as flexibility, concealment, can be carried in other ships. It has been developed as an important
direction of military equipment in the United States, Israel and lots of other countries [1]. Path
following control and formation control as in paper [2] and [3] has been an hot topics in order to
facilitate large-scale autonomous operations. The computer simulation technology such as
MATLAB has laid a good theoretical basis in order to guarantee the algorithm reliability and
stability. But traditional dynamic and kinematic model calculation methods and fluid dynamics
computational software were usually used independently due to the complex marine environment.
They can't replace each other functionally. Thus, the simulation can't ensure that the algorithm
could be applied to the USV directly. It was often difficult to achieve real ship tests because of
financial constraints. An novel experimental platform was designed in this paper which included PC
and surface experiment equipment. The surface equipment was controlled by the PC which run the
control algorithm and received the surface equipment state information on shore. It achieved very
good results in the actual test.

Structure of Platform
The structure of experimental platform was shown in figure 1, which was divided into shore
platform and USV experimental platform. The shore platform consists of a computer and a
long-distance wireless data transmission module. Control algorithm was executed in the computer,
but all the control information was sent to the USV experimental platform through the wireless data
transmission module. USV experimental platform was a miniature surface vessel equipped with a
wireless communication module, Beidou modules, electronic monitoring module course and two
propulsion propellers can sail in the water. It was capable of receiving control commands issued by

© 2016. The authors - Published by Atlantis Press 1535

the shore platform, while its location, speed, heading, propeller speed, battery charge and other
information was sent back to shore platform.
USV structure was shown in figure 1, the Port and Starboard propellers could produce the thrust
power when the motors rotate. When the speed is different, the thrust is imbalance, and so the USV
course will change continuously. When the USV sailing at full speed, we can control the pitch
angle through the control device at stern. USV location and attitude information got from GPS and
AHRS will be sent to the control terminal through wireless communication module. Also the USV
controller can get navigation target information from the control terminal in the same way.

Wireless Wireless Data

Data Transmission
GPS AHR
Battery 1

Battery 2
Computer Controlle
Shore
Port Pitch Starbo
Mot Contr ard

USV experimental
Fig. 1 Structure of the Experiment Platform

Design Of The USV Experiment Platform

Selection Of The USV. Since the USV characteristics of high sailing speed and flexibility, the
USV platform chosen in this paper had the parameters: Long 0.11m, Width 0.36m, a maximum
speed of 15 knots, weighs 15Kg with battery, the minimum radius of gyration 6.4m. Both sides had
a propulsion motor of 36W rated power and a set of interchangeable 50AH battery. Normally the
1st battery power to the control circuit, the 2nd battery to the propulsion motor. In case of a serious
shortage of electricity during testing, the powered battery can be remotely exchanged by the shore
platform to ensure safe return.
Design of control system. Considering the amount of data transmitted and the reliability of
wireless communication, the communication period was designed to 1S. Therefore, the controller
needs to complete the tasks such as control commands receiving, USV status data collection and
sending, the USV control within 1S. ST's Cortex-M3 core ARM controller STM32F103VBT6 was
chosen as the core controller. And WSN-03 was chosen as the wireless data transmission module
with the parameters as follows: half-duplex communication, the maximum transmission distance of
4Km, TTL serial port. The control system circuit schematic was shown in Figure 2.

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 U1
PB0 26 PB0 PC0 8 PC0 DB0
U3 PB1 27 9 PC1 DB1
MCU9255 Md_M 57 PB1 PC1 10
PB5 PB5 PC2 PC2 DB2

17
16
15
20
19
1
TXD1 PB6 58 11 PC3 DB3
PB6 PC3
RXD1 PB7 59 PB7 PC4 24 PC4 DB4
8 VDDIO INT 12 PB8 61 25 PC5 DB5
PB8 PC5

NC
NC
NC
13 VDD nCS 22 PB9 62 37 PC6 DB6
PB9 PC6

RESV
RESV
RESV
10 REGOUT SCL/SCLK 23 PB10 29 38 PC7 DB7
18 24 30 PB10/USART3_TX PC7 39
GND SDA/SDI PB11 PB11/USART3_RX PC8 PC8 C/D
7 AUX_CL AD0/SDO 9 PB12 33 40 PC9 CE
21 11 34 PB12 PC9 51
AUXDA FSYNC PB13 PB13 PC10 PC10 RD
PB14 35 PB14 PC11 52 PC11 WR
PB15 36 PB15 PC12 53 PC12 FS
2 PC13 S_Lmt
PC13/TAMPER-RTC

NC
NC
NC
NC
NC
NC
PC14/OSC32-IN 3 PC14 Starbord_C
PC15/OSC32-OUT 4 PC15 Port_C

2
3
4
5
6
P_Lmt PA0 14

14
P2 DS1302_RST 15 PA0/WKUP 54
PA1 PA1 PD2 PD2 RST
1 TXD2 PA2 16 PA2/USART2_TX
2 RXD2 PA3 17 PA3/USART2_RX
3 VCC-5 RUD_Set PA4 20 60 BOOT0
PA4/SPI1_NSS BOOT0
4 HD_Set PA5 21 PA5/SPI1_SCKPB2/BOOT1
28 PB2 BOOT1
BK1 PA6 22
BD-126 BK2 23 PA6/SPI1_MISO
PA7 PA7/SPI1_MOSI
P1 GND BK3 PA8 41 64
EA1_in 42 PA8 VDD
48 VCC3_3
1 PA9 PA9/USART1_TX VDD
2 EB1_in PA10 43 32
Md_A 44 PA10/USART1_RX VDD
3 VCC-5 PA11 PA11 VDD 19
4 Md_F PA12 45 13
PA12 VDDA
WSN-03 PA13 46 12
GND 49 PA13/JTMS VSSA 63
PA14 PA14/JTCK VSS
C28 PA15 50 PA15/JTDI 47
55 VSS
PB3 PB3/JTDO VSS 31
PB4 56 PB4/JNTRST 18
22pF
2 VSS
Y1 XTAL1 5 1 VBAT
OSC_IN VBAT
C27
XTAL2 6 OSC_OUT NRST 7 RST
1

8MHz
22pF
STM32F103

Fig. 2 MCU schematic

USV location and velocity was provided by the Beidou positioning module, therefore, the
control accuracy could be impacted by the accuracy of positioning module. BD-126 Compass / GPS
dual-mode positioning module was chosen for USV positioning, as shown in figure 2. The
positioning and velocity information would be sent through its GGA and VTG sentence which was
organized in NMEA0183 format [5].
Design Of AHRS.As shown in Figure 3, AHRS designed in the paper consist of a 3-axis
accelerometer, a 3-axis gyroscope, a 3-axis magnetometer sensor and a ARM processer
STM32F107 [4]. All the sensors were integrated into a single chip MPU9255, a 9-axis Motion
Tracking device from InvenSense Company.

3-axis accelerometer

3-axis gyroscope Communication

MCU Interface
STM32F103
3-axis magnetometer

Fig. 3 Diagram of AHRS

The basic step of AHRS could be described as in paper[6, 7]：
(a)The three acceleration (a , a , a )
x y z can be obtained from 3-axis accelerometer in static
conditions. And then we can calculate the Roll angle ϕ and Pitch angle θ with Euler formula as in
Eq. (1):

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  ay
φ = tan ( )
−1

 az
 ax (1)
θ = tan −1 ( )
 a y + az
2 2

[
(b)Then we can get the compensated magnetic field strength M n = m x m y m z from ]T

3-axis magnetometer’s origin data M b = m' x m' y m' z

T
[ ]
through the coordinate rotation and
compensation as in Eq. (2).

 cos θ sin θ sin φ sin θ cos φ   m x 

M b =  0 cos φ − sin φ  m y  (2)
− sin θ cos θ sin φ cos θ cos φ   m z 
(c)Thus, the compensated heading in static condition was computed as in Eq.(3):

m 'y
y = tan −1 (3)
m 'x
(d)Multi-sensor data fusion by quaternion, and obtain the final USV heading data using a
Kalman filter algorithm.
USV Mathematical Model.USV mathematical model was need for control. The USV
movement can be represented by the following equation [8].
(a) USV Plane motion equation
USV in calm water was powered by propeller propulsion and resistance. If the total weight of the
USV was denoted as m, it can be obtained in accordance with Newton's second law:

dv
m⋅ = FP + FS − f (4)
dt
(b)USV rotation equation
When the propulsion from the two propeller was not equal to each other, the USV heading would
change as Eq. (5).

dω b
J⋅ + kω ⋅ ω = ( Fs − FP ) (5)
dt 2
Where, J was the USV moment of inertia; kω was the rotational damping coefficient. USV
heading change can be obtained by rotation angular velocity integration:

t
θ = ∫ ω ⋅ dt (6)
0

(c) propeller characteristic equation

According to the characteristics of the propeller, the propeller thrust generated can be obtained as
follows:

Fi = K Fi ⋅ r ⋅ ri 2 ⋅ Di 4 (7)

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 Where, K Fi was the propeller coefficient; ρ for the density of water; ri for the propeller speed;
Di for propeller diameter; i= P or S, denoted port and starboard propeller respectively.
Substituting Eq. (6) and (7) into (5), nonlinear USV model between propeller speed and heading
would be described as follows:

d 2θ dθ b
J⋅ + kω ⋅ = ( K FS ⋅ r ⋅ rS 2 ⋅ DS 4 − K FP ⋅ r ⋅ rP 2 ⋅ DP 4 ) (8)
dt dt 2

Platform Test
Test Method. Shown in Figure 4, it can be divided into four levels from the system function [9],
that is,: guiding layer, control layer, actuator layer and physical layer. Sampling period of control
algorithm in PC is equal to the communication cycle, namely 1S. But in USV experimental
platform, the sampling period is much smaller than 1S.
Therefore, the guiding layer located on a computer would send guide instruction to USV
platform and the control layer located in the USV platform would control the USV though the
motors and propellers in actuator layer. Therefore, this test method is to send the speed and heading
commands through the computer, and then monitor the USV platform status.

computer
Guiding layer

ARM controller Control layer

Propeller Actuator layer

Sensors USV Disturbance Physical layer

Fig. 4 Diagram of Experiment Platform

System Test Result. According to the above test methods, the experiment platform was tested in
Jinan Changqing Lake under the conditions as wind speed 2m/s, north, Beidou location:
116.811722E, 36.54253N. Given the USV velocity 2m/s, a circular path with radius 20m, the test
results are shown in Figure 5, the heading in the navigation shown in Figure 6.
4

-1

-2

-3

-4
0 20 40 60 80 100 120

Fig. 5 System test result Fig. 6 Heading record in test

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 As can be seen from the figure 5 and figure 6, the USV experimental platform can track circular
path nicely, monitoring and data logging in computer is also fully in line with the true status of the
USV experiment platform, indicating USV experimental platform well complete the navigation
commands sent from the computer on shore, and achieve the USV control experiment.

Conclusion
After debugging, the USV experimental platform can achieve a control algorithm that it can be used
in USV path following control, intelligent collision avoidance and formation control. After the lake
test, the system has good stability and reliability.

Acknowledgement
This work is partially supported in part by Application Basic Research Projects of Ministry of
Transport under Grant 2014329817130, and in part by A Project of Shandong Province Higher
Educational Science and Technology Program under Grant J14LN35, and in part by Shandong
Nature Science Foundation under Grants ZR2013ZEM006 and 2013ZRB01873, Innovation projects
in Shandong Province Department of Transportation 2013A16-04.

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