In this study, to effectively control small unmanned surface vehicles (USVs) for marine research, characteristics of ocean current were learned using the long short-term memory (LSTM) model algorithm of a recurrent neural network (RNN), and ocean currents were predicted. Using the results, a study on the control of USVs was conducted. A control system model of a small USV equipped with two rear thrusters and a front thruster arranged horizontally was designed. The system was also designed to determine the output of the controller by predicting the speed of the following currents and utilizing this data as a system disturbance by learning data from ocean currents using the LSTM algorithm of a RNN. To measure ocean currents on the sea when a small USV moves, the speed and direction of the ship’s movement were measured using speed, azimuth, and location (latitude and longitude) data from GPS. In addition, the movement speed of the fluid with flow velocity is measured using the installed flow velocity measurement sensor. Additionally, a control system was designed to control the movement of the USV using an artificial neural network-PID (ANN-PID) controller [12]. The ANN-PID controller can manage disturbances by adjusting the control gain. Based on these studies, the control results were analyzed, and the control algorithm was verified through a simulation of the applied control system [8, 9].