Unmanned Floating Object Transportation Applying Multiple Dynamic Positioning Tugboats: A Novel Cooperative Control Algorithm

Abstract

Abstract To promote the automation and intelligence of marine floating object transportation, this paper proposes a cooperative consensus control algorithm for multiple unmanned dynamic positioning (DP) tugboats to transport an unactuated floating structure object using cables. The major concept of present algorithm is to implement a leader-follower formation strategy among distributed tugboats, with the aim of effectively maneuvering the object by adjusting the relative position between the virtual leader and the object in a reasonable manner. A cooperative consensus controller is integrated into the feedback controller of each tugboat local DP system in order to facilitate cooperative coordination among tugboats in a formation. A customized DP system, which incorporates the radial basis function neural network supervisor control into the DP controller design and introduces nonlinear disturbance observer into the low-frequency motion state observer design, is proposed to address cable tension disturbances, and thus, the tracking performance of the DP tugboat is improved. Full-scale nonlinear time domain simulations are performed under variable environmental conditions, verifying the effectiveness of the proposed automatic towing control scheme.