Cooperative Multi-Agent Control for Autonomous Ship Towing Under Environmental Disturbances

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 manipulate a ship to a desired position with a desired heading and velocity under the environmental disturbances.The control architecture consists of a supervisory controller in the higher layer and tug controllers in the lower layer.The supervisory controller allocates the towing forces and angles between the tugs and the ship by minimizing the error in the position and velocity of the ship.The weight coefficients in the cost function are designed to be adaptive to guarantee that the towing system functions well under environmental disturbances,and to enhance the efficiency of the towing system.The tug controller provides the forces to tow the ship and tracks the reference trajectory that is computed online based on the towing angles calculated by the supervisory controller.Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm can make the two autonomous tugs cooperatively tow a ship to a desired position with a desired heading and velocity under the(even harsh)environmental disturbances.

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.

Distribution pattern of macrobenthic assemblages along a salinity gradient in the Hangzhou Bay and its adjacent waters

It is widely acknowledged that the distribution of macrobenthos is affected by salinity, but the degree of influence varies in different areas. To explore the distribution pattern of macrobenthic assemblages in the Hangzhou Bay,12 stations were sampled to collect macrobenthos and the corresponding bottom water. Changes in the general characteristics of macrobenthos along the salinity gradient in the Hangzhou Bay and its adjacent waters were considered. Three dominant species were identified, including the polychaetes Sternaspis chinensis, the crustacea Oratosquilla oratoria and the echinoderm Ophiuroglypha kinbergi. And the macrobenthic assemblages showed a zonal distribution along with the salinity change. The correlation analyses showed that salinity, depth,temperature, suspended solids and dissolved oxygen had concurrent significant correlations with carnivorous group, Margalef species richness(d), Brillouin index(H) and Shannon-Wiener diversity index(H'). In light of the strong correlation between salinity and Changjiang River diluted water, which produces considerable disturbances by freshwater inflows, the deposition of suspended solids and the resuspension of seabed sediments,the combined environmental disturbances, instead of salinity alone, should be adopted to explain the zonation distribution pattern of macrobenthic assemblages.

Adaptive back-stepping control on container ships for path following

A feedback-dominance based adaptive back-stepping(FDBAB) controller is designed to drive a container ship to follow a predefined path. In reality, current, wave and wind act on the ship and produce unwanted disturbances to the ship control system.The FDBAB controller has to compensate for such disturbances and steer the ship to track the predefined(or desired) path. The difference between the actual and the desired path along which the ship is to sail is defined as the tracking error. The FDBAB controller is built on the tracking error model which is developed based on Serret-Frenet frame transformation(SFFT). In additional to being affected by external disturbances, the ship has more outputs than inputs(under-actuated), and is inherently nonlinear.The back-stepping controller in FDBAB is used to compensate the nonlinearity. The adaptive algorithms in FDBAB is employed to approximate disturbances. Lyapunov's direct method is used to prove the stability of the control system. The FDBAB controlled system is implemented in Matlab/Simulink. The simulation results verify the effectiveness of the controller in terms of successful path tracking and disturbance rejection.

Fragment Propagation and Colonization Ability Enhanced and Varied at Node Level after Escaping from Apical Dominance in Submerged Macrophytes

Aquatic plants develop strong fragment propagation and colonization ability to endure the natural disturbances. However, detailed research of ability to endure the natural disturbances has been lacking to date. Therefore, reproduction （shoot） and colonization （root） of shoot fragments of Potamogeton crispus L. with or without apices were investigated for the effect of apical dominance, and the growth of decapitated shoot fragments at three lengths （2, 4, 6 cm） was compared. Meanwhile, fragment propagation at levels of bud position was studied for bud position effect after escaping from apical dominance. The results showed significant increases occurred in the outgrowth of lateral branches on fragments decapitated compared with the fragments with apices, implying that apical dominance exists. Different lengths of fragments showed little difference in biomass allocations, but significant differences were noted in their propagation. Meanwhile, the effect of bud position was verified, due to the significant difference of average reproduction per node among the three length groups. Thus, the present study has made progress in the current understanding of aquatic plant dispersion among natural systems and contributes to improve methods of in vitro propagation for re-implantation purposes.

Performance analysis of microcantilever array sensing

Array sensing is increasingly important in the development of microcantilever(MC) sensors, and response consistency is the foundation for MC array sensing. In the present work, we investigated the response consistency of MC array sensing. The responses of two types of commercially available MC arrays were studied under conditions of temperature change, solution replacement and biochemical molecular interaction. For the thermal response, the deflections of both arrays were found to be proportional to temperature, and the responses of the MCs in both arrays were consistent with each other. The thermal response sensitivity for each MC during temperature increase and decrease also showed good consistency. Moreover, the MC array showed good consistency for the response induced by solution replacement. Finally, we also demonstrated that the MC array had good consistency in biochemical detection, exemplified by aflatoxin antibody-anti gen binding. The good response consistency makes this technology reliable and accurate for biochemical sensing.

Persistent pollutants and the patchiness of urban green areas as drivers of genetic richness in the epiphytic moss Leptodon smithii

We determined genetic variation and metal and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon concentrations in Leptodon smithii moss collected in holm oak stands at cities, outskirts and remote areas of Campania and Tuscany（Italy） to investigate if anthropogenic pressure（pollutant emissions and land use change） affects moss genetic richness. In both regions, metal and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon concentrations reflected the trend urban 〉 outskirts 〉 remote areas, excepting Tuscany remote site. In both regions,the moss gene diversity increased from urban to remote areas. The findings suggest the extent and the fragmentation of urban green areas, as drivers of moss genetic richness.