Experimental Evaluation of Sliding Mode Cooperative-Controlled DP Vessels

:A Sliding Mode Distributed Cooperative Control is applied to small-scale model Platform Supply Vessels (PSVs) operating standard Dynamic Positioning Systems in a wave tank. The aim is to keep the relative positions between vessels constant. The tested arrangement consists of two vessels and a virtual leader, which is introduced in order to change the global positions of the formation and to evaluate its behavior under dynamic conditions. Experiments are performed with and without the presence of wind and wave disturbances. Tracking results are compared with numerical simulation data in terms of steady state error and dynamic response.