Robust and Adaptive Ship Path-Following Control System Design

The paper considers the problem of ship path-following system design based on robust and adaptive control methods. The ship under consideration is an underactuated, nonlinear object with unknown model parameters subjected to hard environmental disturbances. For this reason the applied design procedures attempt to combine the disturbances attenuation, function approximation and adaptive control techniques. The whole control system is able to ensure tracking performance on the $\boldsymbol{H}^{\infty}$ optimal attenuation level. Simulations of the ship path-following process have confirmed a good performance of the proposed controller.