Underactuated ship tracking control: theory and experiments. (English) Zbl 1029.93048

Pettersen, K. Y.; Nijmeijer, H.

Int. J. Control 74, No. 14, 1435-1446 (2001).

The authors consider the complete state tracking feedback control of a ship having two controls, namely surge force and yaw moment, but without sway force control. Such a control problem is underactuated and simultaneously it is inherently nonlinear. But the ship model has similarities with chained form systems and may be transformed to the triangular-like form. This makes it possible using the Lyapunov stability technique to elaborate the control law which steers both the position variables and course angle of the ship, guaranteeing the exponential stability of a reference trajectory. The theoretical results are proved on a 1:70 scale model of the ship.

Reviewer: Yuri N.Sankin (Ul’yanovsk)

MSC:

93C95	Application models in control theory
93B51	Design techniques (robust design, computer-aided design, etc.)

Keywords:

tracking; underactuated problem; nonlinear system; ship control; stability analysis; chained form systems; triangular form