Safe Autonomous Ship Operation in a Port
Hierarchical control for autonomous vessels manoeuvring inside a port, combining model predictive control with control barrier function safety certificates.
In collaboration with Kawasaki Heavy Industries
Ports are cluttered, constrained and unforgiving: a vessel has to reach its berth while respecting channel geometry, other traffic and its own sluggish dynamics. This project, with Kawasaki Heavy Industries, designed a hierarchical scheme that separates where to go from how to stay safe.
An RRT-like spatiotemporal planner proposes a path through the port. Model predictive control tracks it over a receding horizon. A control barrier function sits underneath both as a safety certificate, filtering any command that would carry the vessel outside the safe set — so safety does not depend on the planner or the tracker behaving well.
The work appeared at the IFAC World Congress 2023 and was extended into a Springer book chapter.