Abstract: Marine seismic surveys are fundamental to seabed topographic mapping and marine resource exploration. As critical components of marine streamer seismic surveys， surface-towed vehicles (STV) require precise straight-line trajectory tracking to ensure the reliability and validity of exploration data. To achieve high-precision tracking for STVs amidst complex marine disturbances， this paper proposes an adaptive super-twisting control (ASTC) method integrated with a novel adaptive law. Firstly， the dynamics of the surface towing system are modeled， where environmental disturbances， parameter uncertainties， and umbilical forces are aggregated into a lumped disturbance term. Subsequently， a trajectory tracking controller is designed based on the proposed ASTC， with the uniform ultimate boundedness of the closed-loop system proven via Lyapunov stability theory. Numerical simulations demonstrate that the method achieves high-precision tracking under various sea states， exhibiting superior robustness. Notably， the proposed strategy effectively mitigates the inherent trade-off between tracking accuracy and control chattering observed in traditional fixed-gain super-twisting control. By dynamically adjusting gains in response to varying disturbances， it ensures superior performance while significantly suppressing chattering.

Key words: surface-towed vehicles, trajectory tracking, adaptive super-twisting control, lumped disturbance, marine seismic surveys