Towards the Autonomy: Control Systems for the Ship in Confined and Open Waters

The concept of the Marine Autonomous Surface Ship (MASS) requires new solutions in many areas: from law, through economics, social sciences, environmental issues to the technology and even ethics. It also plays a central role in the work of numerous research teams dealing with the ship motion control systems. This article presents the results of the experiments with application of the selected control methods in automatic steering of the movement of an autonomous ship in the two regimes: during the maneuvers at low speed (in a harbor confined waters) and during the lake trials in open water conditions. In the first case, multidimensional state controller synthesized with Linear Matrix Inequalities (LMI) algorithms was used, while, in the second case, Model Predictive Control (MPC) control was adopted. The object for which the experiments were carried out was 1:24 scale model of the Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) carrier. The paper presents also the design of the measurement and control system and the user interface. The experiments were conducted in the natural conditions on the lake. The results of the experiments indicate the fundamental role of the measurement system in the process of controlling an autonomous ship.