Print Email Facebook Twitter Collision prevention of ship towing operation under environmental disturbance Title Collision prevention of ship towing operation under environmental disturbance Author Zhang, Lei (Wuhan University of Technology; Hubei Key Laboratory of Inland Shipping Technology) Du, Zhe (TU Delft Transport Engineering and Logistics) Valdez Banda, Osiris A. (Aalto University) Goerlandt, F.M.B. (Dalhousie University) Du, Lei (Wuhan University of Technology; Aalto University) Li, Xiaobin (Wuhan University of Technology) Date 2022 Abstract Towing operations are highly reliant on the experience of the towing operators. Safety concerns arise when towing operations are subjected to environmental disturbances and dynamic traffic conditions. However, a systematic framework and approaches to enhance the safety and automation of towing operations remain lacking. This work proposes a framework of collision prevention of ship towing operations under environmental disturbance in near port waters. The focus is to prevent internal collisions between tug and assisted ship and provide early warning of possible collisions with other surrounding ships. A cooperative multi-agent control strategy is employed to specify the direction and magnitude of the towing force of the two tugs in real-time. Therefore, in the presence of environmental disturbance, the assisted ship can sail along the planned trajectory, and the acceptable safe geometric distance between each ship pair in the towing system is guaranteed. Further, a COLREGs-compliant collision alert system is designed to promptly remind the towing operators of a collision hazard with nearby ships, and different alert levels indicate different action obligations of towing operators. This proposed framework and developed methods are applied to a tandem towing system consisting of two tugs and one assisted ship to test its feasibility. Subject Collision preventionEnvironmental disturbanceMaritime safetyTowing operationTrajectory control To reference this document use: http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:75285e7c-6298-47f6-92c3-ceeaca175b40 DOI https://doi.org/10.1016/j.oceaneng.2022.112870 Embargo date 2023-07-01 ISSN 0029-8018 Source Ocean Engineering, 266 Bibliographical note Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository 'You share, we take care!' - Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public. Part of collection Institutional Repository Document type journal article Rights © 2022 Lei Zhang, Zhe Du, Osiris A. Valdez Banda, F.M.B. Goerlandt, Lei Du, Xiaobin Li Files PDF 1_s2.0_S0029801822021539_main.pdf 2.56 MB Close viewer /islandora/object/uuid:75285e7c-6298-47f6-92c3-ceeaca175b40/datastream/OBJ/view