Modeling and Sliding-Mode Control for Launch and Recovery System in Predictable Sea States With Feasibility Check for Collision Avoidance

This article investigates a deterministic sea wave prediction-based noncausal control scheme for the launch and recovery (L&R) from a mother ship of small rigid-hulled inflatable boats (RHIBs) for maritime rescue missions. The proposed control scheme achieves an automatic hoisting process ensuring that no collisions occur between the RHIB and mothership hull by using the cable tension force as the manipulated control input. A state-space model of the L&R system is established for the first time where the wave forces and external disturbances such as wind acting on both the mothership and the small boat are fully considered. A fast and safe recovery is ensured by a fixed-time convergent sliding-mode controller, which shortens the cable length to a target value with zero terminal velocity at a predefined time instant subject to unknown disturbances and model mismatches. Since the overall dynamics of the swing angle is underactuated, a feasibility check is proposed to avoid collisions between two vessels and overlarge angular velocities by determining a proper time instant to initiate the hoisting process. To cope with the model mismatch and the external disturbance, the constraints on the swing angle and angular velocity are tightened to ensure safety. The stability of the proposed controller is proven and details of the feasibility check are given. The fidelity of the model and the effectiveness of the proposed scheme are demonstrated in simulation where a realistic sea wave is applied.