**5. Conclusions**

A novel control strategy for the ship towing system is proposed, so that both the tugboat and the towed ship move along the given target trajectory curve accurately. Compared with the existing research studies, the proposed method has the following features.


The proposed method makes full use of the motion laws under the kinetics model and solves the accuracy problem of trajectory tracking by using the dynamical tracking method. In fact, the proposed method can be applied to the precise motion control design of general mechanical models.

**Author Contributions:** Conceptualization, O.L. and Y.Z.; methodology, O.L.; software, O.L.; validation, O.L.; formal analysis, O.L.; investigation, O.L.; resources, Y.Z.; data curation, O.L.; writing original draft preparation, O.L.; writing—review and editing, O.L. and Y.Z.; visualization, O.L.; supervision, Y.Z.; project administration, Y.Z.; funding acquisition, Y.Z. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

**Funding:** This work was supported by Research Foundation for Talents of Guizhou University ([2017]61), the Science and Technology Program of Guizhou Province ([2018]1047), the fund project of Key Laboratory of Advanced Manufacturing technology, Ministry of Education, Guizhou University (KY[2018]478) and the Foundation of Postgraduate of Guizhou Province (2019032).

**Institutional Review Board Statement:** Not applicable.

**Informed Consent Statement:** Not applicable.

**Data Availability Statement:** Not applicable.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The authors declare no conflict of interest. The funders had no role in the design of the study; in the collection, analyses, or interpretation of data; in the writing of the manuscript, or in the decision to publish the results.
