In the period of January – February 2022, a state of the art free running system, developed in cooperation with Kapernikov, was successfully tested at Flanders Maritime Laboratory. This system operates based on Robot Operating System software, which allows to connect several position measurements (e.g. by camera or lidar), as well as steering of rudders and propellers.
The KVLCC2 ship model performed several runs, where the ship was successfully controlled by an autopilot. The autopilots developed in the framework of the PhD research of Changyuan Chen were implemented. The system controlled the acceleration and deceleration phase based on a PID controller, performing a zigzag manoeuvre at regime speed.
Further developments include reaching sub-millimetre precision in the position measurements. As part of the PhD work of Hongwei He, the system will be used to model interactions between multiple autonomous sailing ships in the basin, as well as to further expand existing path planning and object avoiding control systems.
