Particle Swarm Optimization of a Passivity-Based Controller for Dynamic Positioning of Ships

Dynamic positioning (DP) control system is an essential module used in offshore ships for accurate maneuvering and maintaining of ship's position and heading (fixed location or pre-determined track) by means of thruster forces being generated by controllers. In this paper, an interconnection and damping assignment-passivity based control (IDA-PBC) controller is developed for DP of surface ships. The design of the IDA-PBC controller involves a dynamic extension utilizing the coordinate transformation which adds damping to some coordinates to ensure asymptotic stability and adds integral action to enhance the robustness of the system against disturbances. The particle swarm optimization (PSO) technique is one of the the population-based optimization methods that has gained the attention of the control research communities and used to solve various engineering problems. The PSO algorithm is proposed for the optimization of the IDA-PBC controller. Numerical simulations results with comparisons illustrate the effectiveness of the new PSO-tuned dynamic IDA-PBC controller.