Expert visit by Marco Bibuli in the scope of the MONUSEN project
Guidance and Control of Single and Multi-Vehicle Marine Systems
The Faculty of Electrical Engineering at the University of Montenegro had the privilege of hosting Dr Marco Bibuli for a three-day expert visit. The event, organised by the MONUSEN project, took place from May 23rd to 25th, 2023, in Conference Room 308. The objective of the visit was to facilitate the transfer of knowledge and experience in developing and tuning automatic controllers for autonomous marine vehicles, exploiting single-vehicle advanced guidance systems for general geometric paths and familiarisation with multi-vehicle frameworks and related coordination approaches.
Day 1: Automatic Control – Theory and Hands-on
The first day of the visit started with a presentation by Dr Marco Bibuli, a researcher at the National Research Council of Italy (CNR). The lecturer provided an in-depth overview of the fundamentals of control theory applied to marine systems, starting from simple feedback actions for linear systems to more complex regulation schemes of nonlinear plants. He also presented adaptive control techniques, introducing the problem of disturbance and parameter uncertainty.
The second part of the presentation consisted of applying the theoretical part to a simulative framework developed in Matlab, where students could test and verify the presented concepts. Experimental custom design of control systems was proposed to spark the students ingenuity.
Day 2: Single-Vehicle Guidance – Theory and Hands-on
During the second day, Dr Marco Bibuli discussed the kinematic modelling of the guidance problem, with particular reference to Serret-Frenet frame error representation. A virtual-target-based path-following guidance system has been designed based on such a model. Performance evaluation of the guidance system and its limitations have been discussed.
The hands-on part was based on the simulative experience of the virtual-target-based path-following guidance system through the Matlab framework. Students had the chance to test and modify the guidance system.
Day 3: Multi-Vehicle Coordination – Theory and Hands-on
The third day was focused on extending the concept studied in the Single-Vehicle Guidance part. As such, the different motion coordination schemes, such as leader-follower, wingmen and swarm approaches, were derived and analysed. Also, there were some points made about collision avoidance.
The second part was dedicated to extending the Matlab framework, including more autonomous vehicles, thus allowing students to implement the different coordination schemes and test and evaluate the functionalities.
The three-day expert visit provided the researchers at the University of Montenegro with a unique opportunity to learn from experienced experts in the field of marine robotics.