Suvery on control of underactuated ships: Point stabilization and path tracking

As most of the ships are belongs to underactuated mechanical systems, the motion control problems of underactuated ships attract many research concerns. In this paper, the point stabilization and path tracking control of underactuated ships are surveyed, where the techniques for point stabilization of underactuated ship under second-order nonholonomic constraints are explained, and three types of control strategies for path tracking are presented, that is, simplified-state, partial-state and full-state depended control. Furthermore, the straight-line and curved-path tracking are investigated in details. Finally, the research perspectives of motion control of underactuated ships are discussed.