Trajectory tracking control algorithm in terms of quasi-velocities for a class of vehicles

This paper studies the problem of trajectory tracking control for a class of vehicles (underwater vehicles, some horizontally moving vehicles, indoor airships). The control development is based on some velocity transformation arising from the inertia matrix decomposition, Lyapunov’s direct method and a non-adaptive nonlinear tracking controller in terms of the Generalized Velocity Components (GVC). In the nonlinear controller the control gains are strictly related to the vehicle dynamics (especially dynamical couplings). The general algorithm is presented for a 6 DOF vehicle. In the simulation two trajectories were tested. Moreover, one robustness test was done (corresponding to robustness issue considered in this work). The simulation results obtained for a full airship model show that the proposed control scheme guarantees satisfactory performance.