An open loop nonlinear model based thrust controller for marine thrusters

The finite-dimensional nonlinear thruster models (Bachmayer et al. (2000)) employing empirically determined lift/drag curves have been shown to accurately model both the transient and steady state response of marine thrusters. This paper first reports on the development of an asymptotically stable open-loop thrust tracking controller that exploits this new nonlinear thruster model. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first stable model based thrust control law reported for this class of marine thrusters.