Automation and Control of DP Systems

摘要

A hummingbird feeding at a flower or a falcon hovering in the sky has something in common with a vessel drilling a well. They all use a feedback control system to maintain their position. This system uses eyesight or measurements to obtain a positioning error and uses this error to control active steering units (wings, tails, rudders, propellers, jets, and so forth). The control can be manual or automatic, or a combination of both. Automation can reduce operating costs and increase levels of safety and might one day bring us fully autonomous ships, but how does this automation influence the ship design and how can model tests help us to develop safer and cleaner vessels? History might give an indication. Our purpose here is to look at the historic influence of model tests on the development of automation and control for dynamic positioning (DP) systems.