Robust adaptive path following of underactuated ships (Q1888413)

The authors present a methodology to design a controller that forces an underactuated ship with unknown parameters to follow a given path under environmental disturbances induced by waves, wind and ocean-current. The mass and damping matrices are supposed to be diagonal. The proposed controller is designed using the direct Lyapunov method and the backstepping technique. The developed control strategy is extendible to parking and point-to-point navigation. Numerical simulations support the obtained results.