This study aims to solve the problem of path-following control under environmental disturbances and model uncertainties, especially the effects of external wind and wave environments.

Based on a model predictive control (MPC) controller, improved model-free adaptive control (IMFAC) is introduced as the path following control compensator. The error between the ship's actual state and predicted state is corrected to solve the problem of the insufficient accuracy of the model under environmental disturbances such as sudden crosswinds and external wind waves, thereby improving the precision of path-following control.

Ship path-following control simulation experiments are conducted with a scaled-down KVLCC2 ship model. As the results show, compared with traditional MPC control, the MPC-IMFAC method reduces the maximum absolute heading error of the ship by 25.4% under sudden disturbances, and the average absolute heading error decreases by 2.6% under time-varying environmental disturbances.

The simulation results verify that this control method possesses superior anti-interference ability while ensuring path-following control accuracy.