A nonlinear adaptive framework for bounded-error tracking control of a class of non-minimum phase marine vehicles is presented. The control algorithm relies on a special set of tracking errors to achieve satisfactory tracking performance while guaranteeing stable internal dynamics. First, the design of a model-based nonlinear control law, guaranteeing asymptotic stability of the error dynamics,...

The duration of use is usually significantly longer for marine vessels than for roadside vehicles. Therefore, these vessels are often powered by relatively old engines which may propagate air pollution. Also, the quality of fuel used for marine vessels is usually not comparable to the quality of fuels used in the automotive sector and therefore, port areas may exhibit a high degree of air pollu...

Ocean flows and their interactions with marine structures, vehicles, etc [...]

one of the major problems that stands in the WIS'fof the fully automated ship is that of safe guidancein and out of port. This paper addresses the problemof ao.itom1tic. ouidance and rollision avoidance, anddraws upon the-work undertaken over a number of yearsby the Ship Control Group at Plyorouth Polytechnic,U.K., in terms of simulation, prototype model testinqa...

A robust nonlinear observer, utilizing the sliding mode concept, is developed for the dynamic positioning of ships. The observer provides the estimates of linear velocities of the ship and bias from the slowly varying environmental loads. It also filters out wave frequency motion to avoid wear of actuators and excessive fuel consumption. Especially, the observer structure with a saturation func...

This paper presents the design and performance evaluation of two globally stable time varying kinematic Navigation Kalman filters to estimate linear motion quantities, in three dimensions, with application to underwater vehicles. The proposed technique is based on the linear time invariant Kalman filter steady state solution and employs frequency weights to explicitly achieve adequate wave dist...

This paper presents an overview of the Line-of-Sight (LOS) guidance law, which is a widely used method for generating heading reference trajectories, for path-following applications of marine vehicles. Due to the fact that these reference trajectories depend also on the form of the path, five path evaluation criteria are discussed. The guidance problem is presented in a constructive manner. Fir...

There is widespread interest in the deployment of fleets of marine robots with the potential to roam the oceans freely and collect data at an unprecedented scale. This calls for the development of efficient algorithms for multiple vehicle motion planning that can take directly into account the capabilities of each vehicle and environmental conditions and lend themselves to seamless integration ...

Inspired by the previous work of Aicardi et al.[1] a path following controller for underactuated planar vehicles is designed by adopting a polar-like kinematic model of the system. The solution proposed does not generally guarantee null asymptotic path following error, but only its boundedness below an adjustable upper threshold. However, knowledge of the path curvature is not necessary, thus r...