Abstract
With the trend of science and technology development, unmanned autonomous guidance and navigation requirements are critical. Recently, the advanced worldwide countries have been developing unmanned surface vessels (USVs) as well as possible; they applied these USVs to investigate the marine science, surveillance, transportation, and other civilian fields. Its advantages, including saving human resources, reducing the operation risks, increasing the flexibility and efficiency of mission execution. In this study, application a small catamaran with Global Position System (GPS), Lidar, PID controller and two-thrusters, etc. Through series of experiments and analyses were carried out using Taguchi’s experimental design methods, Taguchi orthogonal array (L9), ANOVA, and obtained the optimal factor-level combination and approached robust design. Based on the previous study results of resistance and payload for the catamaran, this study selected two control factors: the width of the catamaran (factor-A), and thruster positions (factor-B). The study results presented that Taguchi’s optimal configuration design in manual remote mode and waypoint navigation model is A2B1, and the accuracy is also A2B1 in 85% confidence level. The impact of accuracy is analyzed using Taguchi’s experimental design method, which is expected to improve unmanned surface vessels’ tracking and navigation accuracy and be applied by relevant research agencies.
