Cooperative manipulation on the water using a swarm of autonomous tugboats

— In this paper we present a strategy that allows a swarm of autonomous tugboats to cooperatively move a large object on the water. The two main challenges are: (1) the actuators are unidirectional and experience saturation; (2) the hydrodynamics of the system are difficult to characterize. The primary theoretical contribution of the paper addresses the first challenge. We present a tracking controller and force allocation strategy that, despite actuator limitations, result in asymptotically convergent tracking for a certain class of reference trajectories. The primary practical contribution is

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2008
• Where: ICRA
• Authors: Joel M. Esposito, Matthew Feemster, Erik Smith
• Keywords: Autonomous Tugboats, ICRA 2008, Primary Practical Contribution, Primary Theoretical Contribution, Robotics