Robust Motion Control of an Underactuated Hovercraft

Abstract

In this paper, we address the tasks of trajectory tracking (TT) and path following (PF) for a hovercraft vehicle in the presence of uncertain parameters and unknown external disturbances. Building on the backstepping technique, the proposed TT (PF) control laws are able to drive a hovercraft toward and stay within a neighborhood of a reference trajectory (path), achieving global practical stability. Moreover, the devised control strategies also guarantee that the actuations remain bounded with respect to the position error. The controller is made robust to constant external disturbances and uncertain model parameters by the introduction of dynamic estimators for the disturbance and friction coefficients. A projection operator is used to ensure the estimates remain within prescribed bounds and are sufficiently smooth to be backstepped. In order to validate the efficacy and performance of the proposed controllers, we present and analyze both simulation and experimental results.