This paper aims to improve the transient control performance of target tracking and guidance for under-actuated unmanned surface vehicles (USVs) by proposing a target tracking guidance method based on two-dimensional dipolar vector fields.

The angular velocity and forward velocity guidance laws of the USV are designed on the basis of the two-dimensional dipolar vector field principle. Stability analysis is carried out to prove that the control system is bounded and stable. Finally, the validity of the proposed method is verified through simulation and experiment.

The tracking position is shown to be convergent to the neighborhood near the target. This method not only makes the tracking trajectory smoother and provides better transient control performance, but it also achieves target tracking while maintaining the desired heading.

The proposed method can overcome the limitations of target tracking and guidance methods by eliminating cases in which a steady-state heading cannot be specified.