Tracking Control of Docking Maneuvers for a Fully Actuated Surface Vessel Using Backstepping

In this brief, trajectory tracking for a fully actuated surface vessel while performing automated docking is addressed. Environmental disturbances, integral action, as well as physical actuator quantities are directly integrated into the approach, avoiding the need for additional control allocation. By employing a backstepping design, uniform local exponential stability is proven. The performance of the controller is demonstrated by full-scale experiments. Moreover, a comparison between the physical experiments and simulations is provided.