Coordination and Optimization Control Framework for Vessels Platooning in Inland Waterborne Transportation System

Vessels sailing in a single platoon could reduce resistance from the perspective of the whole platoon and the individual vessel, and contribute to improving energy benefits. Moreover, transportation energy costs and traffic efficiency are essential indicators for measuring waterborne transportation systems. We attempt to minimize...

Collision Avoidance Systems for Maritime Autonomous Surface Ships Considering Uncertainty in Ship Dynamics

Many Collision Avoidance Systems (CAS) for autonomous ships usually presume that a ship's dynamics are completely known in advance. However, precise parameters for ships in different operating conditions are, in fact, uncertain and unknown. The parameter identification of ship dynamics is challenging and time-consuming. Thus, uncertainties in...

Cooperative multi-vessel systems in urban waterway networks

Urban waterways have great potential in cargo transport to relieve the congestion in the overloaded road networks. This paper explores the potential of applying cooperative multi-vessel systems (CMVSs) to improve the safety and efficiency of transport in urban waterway networks. A framework consisting of vessel train formation (VTF) and...

A ship collision avoidance system for human-machine cooperation during collision avoidance

Maritime Autonomous Surface Ships (MASS) attract increasing attention in recent years. Researchers aim at developing fully autonomous systems that replace the role of human operators. Studies either focus on supporting conflict/collision detection (for manned ships) or solving conflict automatically (for unmanned ships). The cooperation...

Survey on cooperative control for waterborne transport

This article provides a comprehensive overview on cooperative control methods for waterborne transport. We first proposed a hierarchical architecture of cooperation in the waterborne transport systems. Three layers of cooperation are identified according to the range of communication and cooperation, i.e., the individual layer, the local...

Ship collision avoidance methods: State-of-the-art

Collision prevention is critical for navigation safety at sea. At early ages, researchers aimed at developing navigational assistance systems for enhancing situational awareness of human operators as human is at the core of collision avoidance. Recently, autonomous vehicles have gained a remarkable amount of attention with a focus on solving...

Distributed Model Predictive Control for cooperative floating object transport with multi-vessel systems

Compared to an individual Autonomous Surface Vessel (ASV), greater efficiency and operational capability can be realized by a team of cooperative ASVs for certain operations, such as search and rescue, hydrographic survey and navigation assistance. This paper focuses on cooperative floating object transport, i.e., a group of ASVs coordinate...

Eco-VTF: Fuel-efficient vessel train formations for all-electric autonomous ships

In this paper, a distributed control approach is proposed to enable fuel-efficient Vessel Train Formations (VTF) in inland waterways and port areas for addressing the efficiency and environmental issues of transport over water. For path tracking, collision avoidance, and consensus over the VTF speed a distributed Model Predictive Control (MPC...

Intersection crossing of cooperative multi-vessel systems

A Cooperative Multi-Vessel System (CMVS) is a system consisting of multiple coordinated vessels. Vessels utilize Vessel-2-Vessel and Vessel-2-Infrastructure communication to making decisions with negotiating and\or collaborating with each other for a common goal. Due to the geographic limitations of banks and navigation rules and regulations,...