Cooperative adaptive guidance and control paradigm for marine robots in an emergency ship towing scenario

Summary This paper focuses on the control strategy needed by marine robots to be able to follow moving paths within a cooperative framework. This control aspect is essential in order to effectively perform emergency ship towing operations. In particular, these robots coordinate their motion, with the aim of performing an autonomous tying operation, linking the messenger line of a distressed ship to a salvage tugboat. Automatic guidance algorithms are developed in order to provide cooperation and coordination of robots' motion, in such a way to perform the knotting maneuver between the two employed vehicles. In particular, the major contribution of the present work in terms of adaptive control methodology consists in extending a well‐known path following strategy for multi‐vehicle cooperation to cope with moving reference paths. Extensive experimental testing validates the proposed concept, also pointing out the feasibility and effectiveness of the developed system in real‐case scenarios. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.