Design and Reliability Analysis of DP-3 Dynamic Positioning Control Architecture

As the exploration and exploitation of oil and gas proliferate throughout deepwater area, the requirements on the reliability of dynamic positioning system become increasingly stringent. The control objective ensuring safety operation at deep water will not be met by a single controller for dynamic positioning. In order to increase the availability and reliability of dynamic positioning control system, the triple redundancy hardware and software control architectures were designed and developed according to the safe specifications of DP-3 classification notation for dynamically positioned ships and rigs. The hardware redundant configuration takes the form of triple-redundant hot standby configuration including three identical operator stations and three real-time control computers which connect each other through dual networks. The function of motion control and redundancy management of control computers were implemented by software on the real-time operating system VxWorks. The software realization of task loose synchronization, majority voting and fault detection were presented in details. A hierarchical software architecture was planed during the development of software, consisting of application layer, real-time layer and physical layer. The behavior of the DP-3 dynamic positioning control system was modeled by a Markov model to analyze its reliability. The effects of variation in parameters on the reliability measures were investigated. The time domain dynamic simulation was carried out on a deepwater drilling rig to prove the feasibility of the proposed control architecture

Portable Dynamic Positioning Control System on A Barge in Short-Crested Waves Using the Neural Network Algorithm

This paper develops a nonlinear mathematical model to simulate the dynamic motion behavior of the barge equipped with the portable outboard Dynamic Positioning （DP） system in short-crested waves. The self-tuning Proportional- Derivative （PD） controller based on the neural network algorithm is applied to control the thrusters for optimal adjustment of the barge position in waves. In addition to the wave, the current, the wind and the nonlinear drift force are also considered in the calculations. The time domain simulations for the six-degree-of-freedom motions of the barge with the DP system are solved by the 4th order Runge-Kutta method which can compromise the efficiency and the accuracy of the simulations. The technique of the portable alternative DP system developed here can serve as a practical tool to assist those ships without being equipped with the DP facility while the dynamic positioning missions are needed.

Nonlinear observer-controller design for dynamic positioning of ships

The main focus is nonlinear model-based dynamic positioning (DP) control system design. A nonlinear uniform global exponential stability (UGES) observer produces noise-free estimates of the position, the slowly varying environmental disturbances and the velocity, which are used in a proportional-derivative (PD) + feedforward control law. The stability of this observer-controller system is proved by introducing a specific nonlinear cascaded system. The simulation results have successfully demonstrated the performance of designed DP control system.

Dynamic Positioning System Design for A Marine Vessel with Unknown Dynamics Subject to External Disturbances Including Wave Effect

In this paper, a new control system is proposed for dynamic positioning(DP) of marine vessels with unknown dynamics and subject to external disturbances. The control system is composed of a substructure for wave filtering and state estimation together with a nonlinear PD-type controller. For wave filtering and state estimation, a cascade combination of a modified notch filter and an estimation stage is considered. In estimation stage, a modified extended-state observer(ESO) is proposed to estimate vessel velocities and unknown dynamics. The main advantage of the proposed method is its robustness to model uncertainties and external disturbances and it does not require prior knowledge of vessel model parameters. Besides, the stability of the cascade structure is analyzed and input to state stability(ISS) is guaranteed. Later on, a nonlinear PD-type controller with feedforward of filtered estimated dynamics is utilized. Detailed stability analyses are presented for the closed-loop DP control system and global uniform ultimate boundedness is proved using large scale systems method. Simulations are conducted to evaluate the performance of the proposed method for wave filtering and state estimation and comparisons are made with two conventional methods in terms of estimation accuracy and the presence of uncertainties. Besides, comparisons are made in closed-loop control system to demonstrate the performance of the proposed method compared with conventional methods. The proposed control system results in better performance in the presence of uncertainties,external disturbance and even in transients when the vessel is subjected to sudden changes in environmental disturbances.

Robustifying Dynamic Positioning of Crane Vessels for Heavy Lifting Operation

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,i.e.,handling such uncertainties systematically and with stability guarantees,is a long-standing challenge in DP design.A new DP method,composed by an observer and a controller,is proposed to address this challenge,with stability guarantees in the presence of uncertainties.We test the proposed method on an integrated cranevessel simulation environment,where the integration of several subsystems(winch dynamics,crane forces,thruster dynamics,fuel injection system etc.)allow a realistic validation under a wide set of uncertainties.

Representation of Dynamic Positioning on Hovering Type Autonomous Underwater Vehicle in Precise Welding Operations

This paper proposes dynamic positioning(DP) on a hovering autonomous underwater vehicle(HAUV) to perform accurate underwater processes such as welding operations. High maneuverability, high controllability, and hovering of the robot were the prerequisites of this operation, which increase its accuracy and velocity and reduce costs and human health risks. Other types of thrusters were used in this robot to reduce the number of thrusters and controller’s complexity. Controlling every 6 degrees of freedom to perform this type of operation was done. Furthermore, such a delicate operation required controlling the translational and rotational movements together. There was also a need to control the velocities to travel in a prescribed distance at a reasonable time. The possibility of dynamic positioning for welding and maintaining position at a point was defined for the robot. Then the robot’s performance under a defective state-servo motor failure, thruster malfunction-and the subsequent effects on the performance during the predetermined missions were investigated. Simulation results demonstrated that the HAUV has the capability to perform dynamic positioning operations. In this article, one of the prevalent classic control methods called PID controller was employed for controlling the movements of the robot.

Optimal Thrust Allocation Logic Design of Dynamic Positioning with Pseudo-Inverse Method

This article presents a method named pseudo-inverse to solve the optimal thrust allocation of dynamic positioning (DP) system,proposes to optimally determine the azimuth angle of thrusters instead of man-control or semi-auto control,and combines with the pseudo-inverse methods to get the optimal solutions for dynamic positioning control system.It is able to greatly reduce the risk of manual mode.Three different kinds of modes are proposed and detailedly illuminated,and can be used to solve much more complex nonlinear constraint problems,such as typical forbidden vector boundary.Several illustrative examples are provided to demonstrate the effectiveness and correctness of the proposed thrust allocation modes.

Adaptive Observer Based Backstepping Controller Design for Dynamic Ship Positioning

Modified adaptive observer based backstepping control system for dynamic positioning of ship is proposed. As an improvement, the adaptive observer takes the first-order wave frequency model and the bias term which represent the slowly varying environmental disturbances and the unmodeled dynamics. Thus, the wave-frequency motions are filtered out, and only the reconstructed low-frequency motions are sent as inputs of the controller. Furthermore, as the ship dynamics parameters are unknown, the adaptive estimation law is designed for both the unknown ship dynamics and the unmeasured state variables. Based on the estimated states and parameters, backstepping controller considering the integral action is designed. Global exponential stability （GES） for the total system is proved using Lyapunov direct method. Simulation results show a good performance of the observer and control system.

Robust Fuzzy Sampled-Data Control for Dynamic Positioning Ships

A robust H∞sampled-data stabilization problem for nonlinear dynamic positioning(DP) ships with Takagi-Sugeno(T-S) fuzzy models is discussed in this paper. Input delay approach is used to convert the sampleddata DP ship system to a fuzzy system with time-varying delay. Adequate conditions are derived to determine the system's asymptotical stability and achieve H∞performance via Lyapunov stability theorems. Then, the fuzzy sampled-data controller is obtained by analyzing the stabilization condition. Simulation result shows that the proposed method and the designed controller for a DP ship are effective so that the DP ship can maintain the desired position, heading and velocities in the existence of varying environment disturbances.

Coupled Dynamics and Integrated Control for Position and Attitude Motions of Spacecraft:A Survey

Inspired by the integrated guidance and control design for endo-atmospheric aircraft,the integrated position and attitude control of spacecraft has attracted increasing attention and gradually induced a wide variety of study results in last over two decades,fully incorporating control requirements and actuator characteristics of space missions.This paper presents a novel and comprehensive survey to the coupled position and attitude motions of spacecraft from the perspective of dynamics and control.To this end,a systematic analysis is firstly conducted in details to show the position and attitude mutual couplings of spacecraft.Particularly,in terms of the time discrepancy between spacecraft position and attitude motions,space missions can be categorized into two types:space proximity operation and space orbital maneuver.Based on this classification,the studies on the coupled dynamic modeling and the integrated control design for position and attitude motions of spacecraft are sequentially summarized and analyzed.On the one hand,various coupled position and dynamic formulations of spacecraft based on various mathematical tools are reviewed and compared from five aspects,including mission applicability,modeling simplicity,physical clearance,information matching and expansibility.On the other hand,the development of the integrated position and attitude control of spacecraft is analyzed for two space missions,and especially,five distinctive development trends are captured for space operation missions.Finally,insightful prospects on future development of the integrated position and attitude control technology of spacecraft are proposed,pointing out current primary technical issues and possible feasible solutions.

Design and Dynamic Modeling of a 2-DOF Decoupled Flexure-Based Mechanism

Flexure mechanisms with decoupled characteristics have been widely utilized in precision positioning applications.However,these mechanisms suffer from either slow response or low load capability.Furthermore,asymmetric design always leads to thermal error.In order to solve these issues,a novel 2-DOF decoupled mechanism is developed by monolithically manufacturing sets of statically indeterminate symmetric（SIS） flexure structures in parallel.Symmetric design helps to eliminate the thermal error and Finite Element Analysis（FEA） results show that the maximum coupling ratio between X and Y axes is below 0.25% when a maximum pretension force of 200 N is applied.By ignoring the mass effect,all the SIS flexure structures are simplified to ＂spring-damper＂ components,from which the static and dynamics model are derived.The relation between the first resonant frequency of the mechanism and the load is investigated by incorporating the load mass into the proposed dynamics model.Analytical results show that even with a load of 0.5 kg,the first resonant frequency is still higher than 300 Hz,indicating a high load capability.The mechanism＇s static and dynamic performances are experimentally examined.The linear stiffnesses of the mechanism at the working platform and at the driving point are measured to be 3.563 0 N·μm-1 and 3.362 1 N·μm-1,respectively.The corresponding estimation values from analytical models are 3.405 7 N·μm-1 and 3.381 7 N·μm-1,which correspond to estimation errors of-4.41% and 0.6%,respectively.With an additional load of 0.16 kg,the measured and estimated first resonant frequencies are 362 Hz and 365 Hz,respectively.The estimation error is only 0.55%.The analytical and experimental results show that the developed mechanism has good performances in both decoupling ability and load capability;its static and dynamic performance can be precisely estimated from corresponding analytical models.The proposed mechanism has wide potentials in precision positioning applications.

A first-order dynamical model of hierarchical triple stars and its application

For most hierarchical triple stars, the classical double two-body model of zeroth-order cannot describe the motions of the components under the current observational accuracy. In this paper, Marchal＇s first-order analytical solution is implemented and a more efficient simplified version is applied to real triple stars. The results show that, for most triple stars, the proposed first-order model is preferable to the zerothorder model both in fitting observational data and in predicting component positions.

ASSESSING THE DYNAMIC ERRORS OF COORDINATE MEASURING MACHINES

The main factors affecting the dynamic errors of coordinate measuring machines are analyzed. It is pointed out that there are two main contributors to the dynamic errors: One is the rotation of the elements around the joints connected with air bearings and the other is the bending of the elements caused by the dynamic inertial forces. A method for obtaining the displacement errors at the probe position from dynamic rotational errors is presented. The dynamic rotational errors are measured with inductive position sensors and a laser interferometer. The theoretical and experimental results both show that during the process of fast probing, due to the dynamic inertial forces, there are not only large rotation of the elements around the joints connected with air bearings but also large bending of the weak elements themselves.

Improving polyp detection at colonoscopy: Non-technological techniques

Colonoscopy and polypectomy remain the gold standard investigation for the detection and prevention of colorectal cancer.Halting the progression of colonic adenoma through adequate detection of pre-cancerous lesions interrupts the progression to carcinoma.The adenoma detection rate is a key performance indicator.Increasing adenoma detection rates are associated with reducing rates of interval colorectal cancer.Endoscopists with high baseline adenoma detection rate have a meticulous technique during colonoscopy withdrawal that improves their adenoma detection.This minireview article summarizes the evidence on the following simple operator techniques and their effects on the adenoma detection rate;minimum withdrawal times,dynamic patient position change and proximal colon retroflexion.

Random Weighting Estimation Method for Dynamic Navigation Positioning

This paper presents a new random weighting estimation method for dynamic navigation positioning. This method adopts the concept of random weighting estimation to estimate the covariance matrices of system state noises and observation noises for controlling the disturbances of singular observations and the kinematic model errors. It satisfies the practical requirements of the residual vector and innovation vector to sufficiently utilize observation information, thus weakening the disturbing effect of the kinematic model error and observation model error on the state parameter estimation. Theories and algorithms of random weighting estimation are established for estimating the covariance matrices of observation residual vectors and innovation vec- tors. This random weighting estimation method provides an effective solution for improving the positioning accuracy in dynamic navigation. Experimental results show that compared with the Kalman filtering, the extended Kalman filtering and the adaptive windowing filtering, the proposed method can adaptively determine the covariance matrices of observation error and state error, effectively resist the disturbances caused by system error and observation error, and significantly improve the positioning accu- racy for dynamic navigation.