Nonlinear Path Following Control of Fully Actuated Marine Vehicles with Parameter Uncertainty

The paper addresses the problem of steering a fully actuated marine vehicle along a desired path. The methodology adopted for path following control deals explicitly with vehicle dynamics and plant parameter uncertainty. Furthermore, it avoids tight constraints on initial conditions that are present in other approaches reported in the literature. The main contribution of the paper is the development of an efficient two-stage procedure: first, a path following control law is designed based on the kinematics only; this is followed by the design of a robustly stabilizing controller for the vehicle dynamics. A coupling term in the final dynamic control law emerging naturally out of the design procedure ensures stability of the resulting closed-loop system. Simulation results illustrate the performance of the control system proposed.