A trajectory tracking controller for vehicles moving at low speed

The aim of this work is to provide a control strategy for a class of vehicles that is based on transformation of the velocity vector expressed in the earth-fixed coordinates. The presented trajectory tracking control algorithm can be applied for a class of fully actuated vehicles. To this class belong: underwater vehicles, indoor airships, and hovercrafts that move at low velocity (v < 3 m/s). In the proposed approach the velocity gain matrix is strictly related to the system dynamics which allows one to reduce the kinetic energy quickly. Stability analysis of the system under the control algorithm is done using on the Lyapunov's direct method. Simulation results on a 6 DOF full model of indoor airship illustrates effectiveness of the method.