Experimental framework for autonomous fast ships's control design

Abstract

The research on seakeeping control of fast ships requires difficult experiments for modeling and control design. To alleviate the ship motion certain active appendages are added, such moving flaps, T-foil and fins. The motion of appendages must be optimized to counteract each encountered wave. During our first research steps, a scaled down ship, with scaled appendages, has been used in a towing tank facility. The scaled ship is towed at fixed speeds of experimental interest, for instance at the equivalent to 40 knots. The wavemaker in the towing tank is used to generate specified waves. Along the experiments it was noticed that the towing of the replica spoils certain expected phenomena. A more appropriate way of doing experiments to observe all ship motions, is to use an autonomous self-propelled scaled ship. In this paper a new autonomous scaled ship is presented. It contains an on-board control system, so the ship is self-governed. Complex maneuvering can be programmed for certain study interests. Our autonomous ship is linked via radio with an external monitoring system. The ship and the off-shore monitoring system constitute an experimental framework for advanced studies about fast ship control.