Editorial: navigation, guidance and control of unmanned marine vehicles

The proposed paper presents the design and development of the combined guidance and control strategies for the autonomous navigation of an unmanned vessel characterized by azimuth-based thrust architecture. Autonomous Marine Vehicles (AMVs) are consolidates technological tools commonly employed for different tasks such as exploration, sampling and intervention. With the final aim of autonomous shipping, the capabilities of AMVs have to be migrated and adapted towards the reliable and safe control of commercial-like unmanned vessel, that are taking place thanks to a number of technological research projects. The employment of new concept hulls and thrust configurations, as for instance Small Waterplane Area Twin Hull (SWATH) combined with Azimuthal propulsion (common propeller-based thruster with the capability of 360◦ rotation around the vertical axis), requires robust guidance techniques to provide precise and reliable motion control during navigation. The paper proposes a dual-loop guidance and control scheme able to provide advanced navigation capabilities. In particular, the inner control loop, devoted to the actuation of the azimuthal thrusters, allows the tracking of reference course angle (namely the autopilot). Such a control loop is characterized by a modified PID regulation scheme, where a novel adaptive derivative component is inserted in order to improve the convergence curve towards the required course reference. The outer guidance loop, based on Lyapunov/virtual-target approach, allows the vessel to track generic desired paths, thus enhancing the autonomous navigation capabilities also in constrained environments. The paper will provide a deep design and analysis approach for the developed techniques, as well as simulation results of the combined guidance and control scheme, proving the reliability of the proposed approach in different operative conditions. Experimental results will be provided, depending on the availability of the actual autonomous vessel (currently under final development/test phases and related to the specific project activities).

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Application of Inertial and GNSS Integrated Navigation to Seabird Biologging

Journal of Robotics and Mechatronics ◽

10.20965/jrm.2021.p0526 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 33 (3) ◽

pp. 526-536

Author(s):

Masaru Naruoka ◽

Yusuke Goto ◽

Henri Weimerskirch ◽

Takashi Mukai ◽

Taichi Sakamoto ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Power Consumption ◽

High Performance ◽

Feasible Solution ◽

Satellite System ◽

Integrated Navigation ◽

Guidance And Control ◽

Marine Vehicles ◽

Navigation Algorithm ◽

Global Navigation Satellite ◽

And Control

The study demonstrates the versatility of integration of inertial navigation and global navigation satellite system (GNSS) with its unique application to seabird biologging. Integrated navigation was originally developed in the field of aerospace engineering, which requires accurate and reliable position, velocity, and attitude information for the guidance and control of aircraft and spacecraft. Due to its high performance and recent progress of sensor development, integrated navigation has been widely used not only in aerospace but also in many fields represented by land and marine vehicles. One of its ultimate applications under the constraint on the size and power consumption of devices is this study. Seabird biologging involves attaching a logging device onto a seabird for scientific purposes to understand its biomechanics, behavior, and so on. Design restrictions for the device include several tens of grams mass, several tens of millimeters in length, and several tens of milliamperes of power consumption. It is more difficult to maintain the accuracy of such a device than applications to an artificial vehicle. This study has shown that integrated navigation is a feasible solution for such extreme applications with two examples: biologging for wandering albatrosses and great frigatebirds. Furthermore, it should be stressed that the navigation captured the world’s first data of their detailed trajectories and attitudes in their dynamic and thermal soarings. For completeness, the navigation algorithm, simulation results to show the effectiveness of the algorithm, and the logging devices attached to bird are also described.

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Cross Track Error and Proportional Turning Rate Guidance of Marine Vehicles

Journal of Ship Research ◽

10.5957/jsr.1994.38.2.123 ◽

1994 ◽

Vol 38 (02) ◽

pp. 123-132

Author(s):

Fotis A. Papoulias

Keyword(s):

Design Parameters ◽

System Response ◽

Track Error ◽

Guidance And Control ◽

Marine Vehicles ◽

Guidance Law ◽

Linearized Stability ◽

And Control ◽

Cross Track ◽

Final System

The problem of turning rate guidance and control of marine vehicles is considered. Feedback with feed forward rudder control is used to deliver a specified turning rate for the vehicle, while a guidance law is employed to create the necessary sequence of turning rate commands which would allow convergence to a desired geographical path. Two different guidance schemes are presented and analyzed, namely, cross track error and proportional turning rate guidance. Stability conditions are computed explicitly, while nonlinear analysis techniques illustrate the significance of design parameters on the final system response that cannot be inferred from linearized stability results.

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