Cooperative consensus control applied to multi-vessel DP operations

In this work, consensus control concepts are applied combined with the DP System of each ship. The cooperative DP controller will be investigated with the analysis of the coupled dynamics of the vessels. The influence of cooperative control gains on the whole system will be discussed, using the frequency response of the open loop system. Fully nonlinear time-domain simulations and experimental results will be used to demonstrate the operation of cooperative control. Besides that, comparisons between the small-scale experiments and equivalent numerical simulations will be carried out, validating the numerical's results. The adopted design requirements are also demonstrated to be met.