document

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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A business class for autonomous mobility-on-demand: Modeling service quality contracts in dynamic ridesharing systems

Alves Beirigo, B. (author), Negenborn, R.R. (author), Alonso-Mora, J. (author), Schulte, F. (author)

With the popularization of transportation network companies (TNCs) (e.g., Uber, Lyft) and the rise of autonomous vehicles (AVs), even major car manufacturers are increasingly considering themselves as autonomous mobility-on-demand (AMoD) providers rather than individual vehicle sellers. However, matching the convenience of owning a vehicle...

journal article 2022

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An Auction-Based Multi-Agent System for the Pickup and Delivery Problem with Autonomous Vehicles and Alternative Locations

Los, J. (author), Schulte, F. (author), Spaan, M.T.J. (author), Negenborn, R.R. (author)

The trends of autonomous transportation and mobility on demand in line with large numbers of requests increasingly call for decentralized vehicle routing optimization. Multi-agent systems (MASs) allow to model fully autonomous decentralized decision making, but are rarely considered in current decision support approaches. We propose a multi...

conference paper 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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A Learning-Based Optimization Approach for Autonomous Ridesharing Platforms with Service-Level Contracts and On-Demand Hiring of Idle Vehicles

Alves Beirigo, B. (author), Schulte, F. (author), Negenborn, R.R. (author)

Current mobility services cannot compete on equal terms with self-owned mobility products concerning service quality. Because of supply and demand imbalances, ridesharing users invariably experience delays, price surges, and rejections. Traditional approaches often fail to respond to demand fluctuations adequately because service levels are,...

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

Du, Zhe (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

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

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Model predictive trajectory tracking control and thrust allocation for autonomous vessels

Haseltalab, A. (author), Garofano, V. (author), van Pampus, Maurits (author), Negenborn, R.R. (author)

The maneuvering control of autonomous vessels has been under extensive investigations by academic and industrial communities since it is one of the primary steps towards enabling unmanned shipping. In this paper, a model predictive control (MPC) approach is presented for trajectory tracking control of vessels which takes into account the...

journal article 2020

document

Cooperative control of autonomous tugs for ship towing

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

Autonomous surface vehicles (ASVs) are seeing a significant development over the last decade. In recent years, their commercial applications are attracting the attention of many companies. One of the promising subjects is to develop autonomous tugs for ship berthing. This paper focuses on the cooperative control of autonomous tugs for ship...

journal article 2020

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The collaborative autonomous shipping experiment (Case): Motivations, theory, infrastructure, and experimental challenges

Haseltalab, A. (author), Garofano, V. (author), Afzal, Muhammad Raheel (author), Faggioni, Nicoló (author), Li, Shijie (author), Liu, Jialun (author), Ma, Feng (author), Martelli, Michele (author), Singh, Yogang (author), Slaets, Peter (author), You, Xu (author), Negenborn, R.R. (author)

The future autonomous ships will be operating in an environment where different autonomous and non-autonomous vessels with different characteristics exist. These vessels are owned by different parties and each uses its owned unique approaches for guidance and navigation. The Collaborative Autonomous Shipping Experiment (CASE) aims at...

journal article 2020

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Overcoming mobility poverty with shared autonomous vehicles: A learning-based optimization approach for Rotterdam Zuid

Alves Beirigo, B. (author), Schulte, F. (author), Negenborn, R.R. (author)

Residents of cities’ most disadvantaged areas face significant barriers to key life activities, such as employment, education, and healthcare, due to the lack of mobility options. Shared autonomous vehicles (SAVs) create an opportunity to overcome this problem. By learning user demand patterns, SAV providers can improve regional service...

conference paper 2020

document

Platform-based Platooning to Connect Two Autonomous Vehicle Areas

Pourmohammadzia, N. (author), Schulte, F. (author), Negenborn, R.R. (author)

Autonomous vehicles (AVs) have been successfully applied in closed environments such as ports and industrial zones, while their operation in open areas has a long way to go. The current research is initiated to overcome this limitation by the introduction of platooning as a transfer mode. It investigates a container transportation problem...

conference paper 2020

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Cooperative multi-vessel systems in urban waterway networks

Chen, L. (author), Huang, Y. (author), Zheng, Huarong (author), Hopman, J.J. (author), Negenborn, R.R. (author)

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...

journal article 2020

document

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

Huang, Y. (author), Chen, L. (author), Chen, P. (author), Negenborn, R.R. (author), van Gelder, P.H.A.J.M. (author)

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...

review 2020

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State-of-the-Art Research on Motion Control of Maritime Autonomous Surface Ships

Wang, L. (author), Wu, Qing (author), Liu, Jialun (author), Li, Shijie (author), Negenborn, R.R. (author)

At present, with the development of waterborne transport vehicles, research on ship faces a new round of challenges in terms of intelligence and autonomy. The concept of maritime autonomous surface ships (MASS) has been put forward by the International Maritime Organization in 2017, in which MASS become the new focus of the waterborne...

journal article 2019

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Adaptive predictive path following control based on least squares support vector machines for underactuated autonomous vessels

Liu, Chenguang (author), Zheng, Huarong (author), Negenborn, R.R. (author), Chu, Xiumin (author), Xie, Shuo (author)

Since vessel dynamics could vary during maneuvering because of load changes, speed changing, environmental disturbances, aging of mechanism, etc., the performance of model-based path following control may be degraded if the controller uses the same motion model all the time. This article proposes an adaptive path following control method...

journal article 2019

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Model predictive maneuvering control and energy management for all-electric autonomous ships

Haseltalab, A. (author), Negenborn, R.R. (author)

Over the last few years, autonomous shipping has been under extensive investigation by the scientific community where the main focus has been on ship maneuvering control and not on the optimal use of energy sources. In this paper, the purpose is to bridge the gap between maneuvering control, energy management, and the control of the Power and...

journal article 2019

document

Adaptive control for autonomous ships with uncertain model and unknown propeller dynamics

Haseltalab, A. (author), Negenborn, R.R. (author)

Motion control is one of the most critical aspects in the design of autonomous ships. During maneuvering, the dynamics of propellers as well as the craft hydrodynamical specifications experience severe uncertainties. In this paper, an adaptive control approach is proposed to control the motion and trajectory tracking of an autonomous vessel...

journal article 2019