Energy-Efficient and Actuator-Friendly Control Under Wave Disturbances: Model Reference vs. PID for Thruster Surge

TL;DR

This paper compares model reference control and PID controllers for thruster surge control in marine systems, demonstrating that MRC achieves better energy efficiency and actuator friendliness while maintaining acceptable tracking under wave disturbances.

Contribution

It introduces a high-order identified model for a marine thruster and compares control strategies, highlighting the advantages of MRC over PID in energy and actuator stress management.

Findings

MRC outperforms PID in energy efficiency and actuator smoothness.

IMC-based control performs nearly as well as MRC.

PID controllers have higher energy consumption and actuator activity.

Abstract

In this study, we compare a model reference control (MRC) strategy against conventional PID controllers (tuned via metaheuristic algorithms) for surge velocity control of a thruster-driven marine system, under combined wave disturbance and sensor noise. The goal is to evaluate not only tracking performance but also control energy usage and actuator stress. A high-order identified model of a Blue Robotics T200 thruster with a 2~kg vehicle is used, with an 8~N sinusoidal wave disturbance applied and white noise ( added to the speed measurement. Results show that the optimized MRC (MRC-R*) yields the lowest control energy and smoothest command among all controllers, while maintaining acceptable tracking. The IMC-based design performs closely. In contrast, PID controllers achieve comparable RMS tracking error but at the cost of excessive actuator activity and energy use, making them impractical in such scenarios. Future