Trajectory Planning and Control for Automatic Docking of ASVs with Full-Scale Experiments

We propose a method for performing automatic docking of a small autonomous surface vehicle (ASV) by interconnecting an optimization-based trajectory planner with a dynamic positioning (DP) controller for trajectory tracking. The trajectory planner provides collision-free trajectories by considering a map with static obstacles, and produces feasible trajectories through inclusion of a mathematical model of the ASV and its actuators. The DP controller tracks the time-parametrized position, velocity and acceleration produced by the trajectory planner using proportional-integral-derivative feedback with velocity and acceleration feed forward. The method’s performance is tested on a small ASV in confined waters in Trondheim, Norway. The ASV performs collision-free docking maneuvers with respect to static obstacles when tracking the generated reference trajectories and achieves successful docking.