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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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Kougiatsos, N. (author), Zwaginga, J.J. (author), Pruyn, J.F.J. (author), Reppa, V. (author)To integrate and assist the system and automation design phases of complex marine vessels, this paper proposes a two-level semantically enhanced scheme. At the design level, the system components are described and automatically connected by a developed graph-making tool using semantic 'knowledge'. Decisions regarding the system selection are...conference paper 2023
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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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Multi-Objective Cooperative Control for a Ship-Towing System in Congested Water Traffic EnvironmentsDu, 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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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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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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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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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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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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Ye, J. (author), Roy, Spandan (author), Godjevac, Milinko (author), Reppa, V. (author), Baldi, S. (author)Construction crane vessels make use of dynamic positioning (DP) systems during the installation and removal of offshore structures to maintain the vessel's position. Studies have reported cases of instability of DP systems during offshore operation caused by uncertainties, such as mooring forces. DP “robustification” for heavy lift operations...journal article 2021
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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
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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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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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Ye, J. (author), Reppa, V. (author), Negenborn, R.R. (author)Offshore structures with large mass are installed and removed by heavy lift vessels. During offshore constructions, two safety-critical interconnected operations take place, the dynamic positioning of the vessel and the lifting of the heavy structure by an immovable boom crane on the vessel. Existing studies on offshore boom crane control...journal article 2020
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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