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Review of floating object manipulation by autonomous multi-vessel systems

Du, Zhe (author), Negenborn, R.R. (author), Reppa, V. (author)

The regulatory endorsement of the International Maritime Organization (IMO) and the support of pivotal shipping market players in recent years motivate the investigation of the potential role that autonomous vessels play in the shipping industry. As the complexity and scale of the envisioned applications increase, research works gradually...

review 2023

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Distributed Dynamic Coordination Control for Offshore Platform Transportation Under Ocean Environmental Disturbances

Du, Zhe (author), Negenborn, R.R. (author), Reppa, V. (author)

Transportation of a large offshore platform from inland waters to the open sea is a hazardous and challenging mission. With the development of the autonomous surface vessel (ASV), the problem of large floating object transportation has a chance to be solved by applying multiple physical-connected autonomous tugboats. This article proposes a...

journal article 2023

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A Multi-Sensory Switching-stable Architecture for Distributed Fault Tolerant Propulsion Control of Marine Vessels

Kougiatsos, N. (author), Negenborn, R.R. (author), Reppa, V. (author)

Nowadays, marine vessels constitute safety-critical assets facilitating the transport of millions of passengers and tons of cargo worldwide. As such, they require a large number of heterogeneous sensors dispersed in the various on-board machinery for operational and condition monitoring of their vital systems, such as the propulsion system....

journal article 2022

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Mission-oriented Modular Control of Retrofittable Marine Power Plants

van Benten, M.C. (author), Kougiatsos, N. (author), Reppa, V. (author)

This paper presents the design methodology of a mission-oriented modular control system for marine power plants. To this end, first power profiles, power plant layouts and control systems of multiple vessels such as tugboats, offshore support vessels, cargo ships and cruise ships are analyzed. By decomposing the power profile in two components,...

journal article 2022

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Vessel passage scheduling through cascaded bridges using mixed-integer programming

Segovia Castillo, P. (author), Negenborn, R.R. (author), Reppa, V. (author)

This paper addresses the problem of guaranteeing efficient inland waterway transport in the presence of sequential movable bridges, which must be operated to grant vessel passage. The main contribution is the formulation of the vessel passage scheduling problem as a mixedinteger programming problem. The scheduling algorithm receives vessel...

journal article 2022

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COLREGs-aware Trajectory Optimization for Autonomous Surface Vessels

Tsolakis, A. (author), Benders, D. (author), de Groot, O.M. (author), Negenborn, R.R. (author), Reppa, V. (author), Ferranti, L. (author)

This paper presents a rule-compliant trajectory optimization method for the guidance and control of autonomous surface vessels. The method builds on Model Predictive Contouring Control and incorporates the International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea - known as COLREGs - relevant for motion planning. We use these traffic rules...

journal article 2022

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Adaptive Learning of Inland Ship Power Propulsion under Environmental Disturbances

Dann, Nicolas (author), Segovia Castillo, P. (author), Reppa, V. (author)

This paper presents an adaptive approximation-based scheme for learning a partially known ship power propulsion plant under various environmental conditions. Considering the effect of water depth on the engine power, a dynamic model is defined comprised of the engine dynamics and the 1-DoF ship manoeuvring dynamics. The modelling challenge is...

journal article 2022

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A distributed virtual sensor scheme for marine fuel engines

Kougiatsos, N. (author), Reppa, V. (author)

This paper proposes a virtual sensor scheme designed to compensate for sensor fault effects in marine fuel engines. The proposed scheme design follows a distributed approach, where the marine fuel engine is decomposed in several subsystems. Then, for each subsystem we design a monitoring agent that can actively compensate for the effects of...

journal article 2022

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Distributed model-based sensor fault diagnosis of marine fuel engines

Kougiatsos, N. (author), Negenborn, R.R. (author), Reppa, V. (author)

This paper proposes a distributed model-based methodology for the detection and isolation of sensor faults in marine fuel engines. The proposed method considers a Mean Value First Principle model and a wide selection of heterogeneous sensors for monitoring the engine components. The detection of faults is realised based on residuals generated...

journal article 2022

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A Stereovision-based Navigation System for Autonomous Vessels

Hepworth, M. (author), Garofano, V. (author), Pang, Y. (author), Reppa, V. (author)

Sustainability goals have reignited interest in more fuel efficient modalities for urban freight transportation. The autonomous inland vessel has the potential to enable a modality shift to the waterway, however economically-conscious solutions to the technological challenges are lacking. This paper explores the potential role of stereovision...

journal article 2022

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Scheduling Inland Waterway Transport Vessels and Locks Using a Switching Max-Plus-Linear Systems Approach

Segovia Castillo, P. (author), Pesselse, Mike (author), van den Boom, A.J.J. (author), Reppa, V. (author)

This paper considers the inland waterborne transport (IWT) problem, and presents a scheduling approach for inland vessels and locks to generate optimal vessel and lock timetables. The scheduling strategy is designed in the switching max-plus-linear (SMPL) systems framework, as these are characterized by a number of features that make them...

journal article 2022

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Multi-Objective Cooperative Control for a Ship-Towing System in Congested Water Traffic Environments

Du, Zhe (author), Negenborn, R.R. (author), Reppa, V. (author)

This paper proposes a multi-objective cooperative control method for a ship-towing system in congested water traffic environments. The control objectives are to coordinate multiple autonomous tugboats for transporting a ship to: (i) follow the waypoints, (ii) adjust the heading, (iii) track the speed profile, and (iv) resolve collisions. The...

journal article 2022

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COLREGS-Compliant collision avoidance for physically coupled multi-vessel systems with distributed MPC

Du, Zhe (author), Negenborn, R.R. (author), Reppa, V. (author)

This paper proposes a distributed control scheme for autonomous tugboats to tow a ship in a restricted water traffic environment ensuring collision avoidance while being compliant with maritime regulation called COLREGS. The complex problem is cooperatively solved by addressing three sub-optimization problems. The first is to optimize the...

journal article 2022

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Dynamic Coordination of Multiple Vessels for Offshore Platform Transportation

Du, Zhe (author), Negenborn, R.R. (author), Reppa, V. (author)

This paper proposes a novel dynamic coordination control scheme for a physically connected multi-vessel towing system to transport an offshore platform. The transportation process is executed by four tugboats, and each of them has a leading or following role. To render the transportation faster, the roles of the tugboats can be switched in...

conference paper 2022

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Multi-vessel cooperative speed regulation for ship manipulation in towing scenarios

Du, Z. (author), Negenborn, R.R. (author), Reppa, V. (author)

This paper proposes a multi-agent control scheme for multiple physically interconnected tugboats performing a ship towing process. These tugs are coordinated by two control layers. In the higher layer, the supervisory controller outputs the desired towing forces and reference trajectories for the tugs. This information is used by a tug's...

journal article 2021

document

Model-Reference Reinforcement Learning for Collision-Free Tracking Control of Autonomous Surface Vehicles

Zhang, Q. (author), Pan, W. (author), Reppa, V. (author)

This paper presents a novel model-reference reinforcement learning algorithm for the intelligent tracking control of uncertain autonomous surface vehicles with collision avoidance. The proposed control algorithm combines a conventional control method with reinforcement learning to enhance control accuracy and intelligence. In the proposed...

journal article 2021

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MPC Framework for the Energy Management of Hybrid Ships with an Energy Storage System

Antonopoulos, S. (author), Visser, K. (author), Kalikatzarakis, Miltiadis (author), Reppa, V. (author)

This paper proposes an advanced shipboard energy management strategy (EMS) based on model predictive control (MPC). This EMS aims to reduce mission-scale fuel consumption of ship hybrid power plants, taking into account constraints introduced by the shipboard battery system. Such constraints are present due to the boundaries on the battery...

journal article 2021

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MPC-based COLREGS Compliant Collision Avoidance for a Multi-Vessel Ship-Towing System

Du, Zhe (author), Reppa, V. (author), Negenborn, R.R. (author)

Collision avoidance plays a vital role in autonomous vehicle systems. As the complexity and scale of missions increase, multi-vehicle systems are adopted in practice. However, there is limited research on collision avoidance of a physically interconnected multi-vessel system. This paper proposes a control scheme for tugboats to tow a ship in...

conference paper 2021

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Cooperative multi-agent control for autonomous ship towing under environmental disturbances

Du, Zhe (author), Negenborn, R.R. (author), Reppa, V. (author)

Among the promising application of autonomous surface vessels (ASVs) is the utilization of multiple autonomous tugs for manipulating a floating object such as an oil platform, a broken ship, or a ship in port areas. Considering the real conditions and operations of maritime practice, this paper proposes a multi-agent control algorithm to...

journal article 2021

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Distributed Leader-Follower Formation Control for Autonomous Vessels based on Model Predictive Control

van Pampus, M.J. (author), Haseltalab, A. (author), Garofano, V. (author), Reppa, V. (author), Deinema, Y.H. (author), Negenborn, R.R. (author)

Formation control of autonomous surface vessels (ASVs) has been studied extensively over the last few years since it offers promising advantages. In this paper, two control methods for distributed leader-follower formation control are proposed: A Nonlinear Model Predictive Control (MPC) method and an MPC method using Feedback Linearization. One...

conference paper 2021