Robust control design for positioning of an unactuated surface vessel

In this paper, a robust controller is designed to achieve accurate positioning of an unactuated surface vessel by using multiple unidirectional tugboats. After initially locating opposing tugboats to specific configurations, the control problem is transformed into a second order system with an uncertain non-symmetric input gain matrix. Upon applying a matrix decomposition, a robust controller is proposed. Detailed stability analysis ensured asymptotic tracking. Numerical simulation results demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed controller.