The technical feasibility of roll motion control devices has been amply demonstrated for over
100 years. Performance, however, can still fall short of expectations because of diculties associated
with control system designs, which have proven to be far from trivial due to fundamental
performance limitations and large variations of the spectral characteristics of wave-induced roll
motion. This tutorial paper presents an account of the development of various ship roll motion
control systems together with the challenges associated with their design. It discusses the assessment
of performance and the applicability of dierent mathematical models, and it surveys
the control methods that have been implemented and validated with full scale experiments. The
paper also presents an outlook on what are believed to be potential areas of research within this
topic.