Nonlinear tracking control for some marine vehicles and airships

This paper presents a trajectory tracking control strategy, based on use of dynamical couplings, which is appropriate for a class of marine vehicles and or indoor airships (blimps) moving at low speed. The strategy consists of two steps: at the beginning the equations of motion are transformed into a velocity space, and next the nonlinear controller expressed in terms of the new variables is designed. The crucial role play here dynamical couplings in the vehicle because the system dynamics is incorporated into the control gain matrix. The control algorithm can be applied for fully actuated vehicles. Because of the assumed limitations the proposed method is suitable for simulation tests. The stability of the system under the designed control algorithm is shown using the Lyapunov theory. Simulation results for an indoor airship model demonstrate successful performance of the proposed approach.