A nonlinear controller for trajectory tracking of hovercraft robot

In this paper, a global state feedback tracking controller for surface vehicles is presented. Here, the hovercraft robot model is considered. The controller is designed after transformation the vehicle equations of motion. The main feature of this controller is that it can be used both for fully actuated and underactuated systems. This feature arises from the fact that the dynamics of the vehicle is taken into consideration. The stability of the designed controller is demonstrated based on a Lyapunov method. The controller can be used, in general, for various moving systems as unmanned underwater vehicle, hovercrafts or airships. In this note however, simulation results on a 3-DOF underactuated hovercraft demonstrate the effectiveness of the given approach.