Dynamic Coordination of Multiple Vessels for Offshore Platform Transportation

Abstract

This paper proposes a novel dynamic coordination control scheme for a physically connected multi-vessel towing system to transport an offshore platform. The transportation process is executed by four tugboats, and each of them has a leading or following role. To render the transportation faster, the roles of the tugboats can be switched in the towing process. The dynamic coordination decision mechanism is designed to allocate in real-time a combination of roles to the tugs by comparing the position and heading of the offshore platform to the next waypoint position. A control allocation strategy is developed to optimally control the position and heading of the tugboats considering multiple constraints. The reference trajectory of the tugboats is dynamically calculated based on the assigned role of each tugboat. A simulation experiment indicates that the proposed control scheme can enhance the maneuver-ability of the physically connected multi-vessel towing system and increase the efficiency of offshore platform transportation.