Global κκ-exponential way-point maneuvering of ships: Theory and experiments

The paper considers way-point maneuvering of ships with only two control inputs available (surge force and yaw moment). A line-of-sight (LOS) motivated control law that globally κκ-exponentially stabilizes an underactuated ship in three degrees of freedom is derived using cascaded control theory. In addition to incorporating the nice features of the LOS algorithm, the control law is easy to tune using linear control techniques. Furthermore, experimental results with a model ship, scale 1:70, are presented to verify and illustrate the theory.