DEVELOPMENT OF NEW NONLINEAR CONTROLLERS FOR TRAJECTORY TRACKING AND PATH-FOLLOWING OF UNDERACTUATED OCEAN VEHICLES

欠驱动海洋机器人的轨迹跟踪控制和路径跟踪不仅具有理论挑战性，而且具有重要的实践意义。本计画首先发展全状态回授控制器之设计方法，以使系统矩阵中含有非对角项之欠驱动海洋载具（包括水面舰艇及水下机器人），能追踪虚拟载具所产生之参考轨迹，并以所需之前进速度沿预定路径前进。其次，我们开发的方法来设计观测器估计的不可测状态（速度）的车辆，并结合全状态反馈控制器有输出反馈的基于控制器。最后，将所提出的控制设计方法推广到一类欠驱动机械系统。

Trajectory tracking control and path-following of underactuated ocean vehicles are not only of theoretical challenging but also important practice. This project is firstly to develop methodologies to design full-state feedback controllers to force the underactuated ocean vehicles including surface ships and underwater vehicles with off-diagonal terms in their system matrices to track reference trajectories generated by virtual vehicles, and to follow a predefined path with a desired forward speed. Secondly, we develop methods to design observers to estimate the unmeasured states (velocities) of the vehicles and incorporate with the full-state feedback controllers to have output-feedback observer-based controllers. Lastly, the proposed control design methods are extended to a certain class of underactuated mechanical systems.