Motion Planning and its Feedback Stabilization for Underactuated Ships: Virtual Constraints Approach

The paper suggests a method for motion generation and feedback stabilization of a dynamical model for an underactuated ship with 3 degrees of freedom and 2 control inputs with a presence of lumped invironmental forces acting on the model. If the geometrical path for ship motion is given, the method suggests a description of all feasible motions of the model along this path. It is shown how to design controller to counteract environmental forces remaining on path.