Global finite-time heading control of surface vehicles

In this paper, a global finite-time heading control (GFHC) scheme for surface vehicles is proposed. The salient features of the GFHC scheme are triple-fold: (1) A discontinuous control law is proposed to guarantee the finite-time stability of the entire closed-loop heading control system. (2) The finite-time convergence leads to accurate heading control and remarkable disturbance rejection. (3) Furthermore, it reveals that the proposed GFHC scheme treats asymptotic heading controllers as special cases. Simulation studies and comprehensive comparisons on various scenarios demonstrate the effectiveness and superiority of the proposed GFHC scheme.