Objective   For the ship-course nonlinear control system subject to time-varying environmental disturbances with parametric uncertainties, to achieve the real-time requirements for course control,

  Methods   an adaptive self-regulation PID ship course tracking control scheme not depending on model parameters and unknown input is proposed by using adaptive technique. With Lyapunov direct method to verify the designed control law, it can guarantee all signals in the closed-loop system of course control are bounded.

  Results   Simulation results show that the controller can adaptively regulate the gain of PID. It not only inherits the advantages of the traditional PID controller, but also has good robustness to unknown time-varying disturbances.

  Conclusion   The study results can provide reference for the course tracking control design of ships.