Boundary Feedback Trajectory Tracking Control Of Rigid Bodies With Interior Shallow-Water Sloshing

The problem of tracking control is addressed for rigid bodies with interior shallow-water sloshing. The liquid motion is modeled by the Saint-Venant equations, coupled with the ODE of the rigid body, leading to a global system with an ODE-hyperbolic PDE cascade structure. The paper aims to design an innovative boundary feedback framework for a pre-specified position to deal with rigid body tracking errors. Using only one control force applied to the rigid body, the formulated strategy efficiently stabilizes both the finite- and infinite-dimensional states. The main complexity lies in the fact that no sensor can be implemented in the liquid domain. Indeed, the proposed stabilizing feedback law simply requires measurements of (i) the rigid body position error and velocity and (ii) the liquid pressure at the cavity walls (liquid boundary). The asymptotic stability of the closed-loop system is analyzed using the Lyapunov direct method and LaSalle’s invariance principle without any discretization, reduction, and linearization. Additional controller features are highlighted by simulation results, including its benefits in contrast to the corresponding PD controller and its robustness to time delay and system uncertainty.