CROSS-TRACK ERROR AND PROPORTIONAL TURNING RATE GUIDANCE OF MARINE VEHICLES

The problem of turning rate guidance and control of marine vehicles is considered. Feedback with feed-forward rudder control is used to deli ver a specified turning rate for the vehicle, while a guidance law is employed to create the necessary sequence of turning rate commands whi ch would allow convergence to a desired geographical path. Two differe nt guidance schemes are presented and analyzed, namely, cross track er ror and proportional turning rate guidance. Stability conditions are c omputed explicitly, while nonlinear analysis techniques illustrate the significance of design parameters on the final system response that c annot be inferred from linearized stability results.