Reconfigurable control for ship steering

This paper is concerned with the application of a heuristic approach in the design of a fault-tolerant control system for ship steering. It proposes an advanced reconfigurable control system (RCS) for ship course changing/keeping and track keeping, robust to faults in actuator, gyrocompass and global positioning system (GPS) in the presence of disturbances (waves and currents). The proposed control scheme uses a reference model for compensation of signals from fault sensors and a compensator for reducing the loss of the control performance produced by a fault in the steering machine. In the case of the occurrence of the fault in one or more components, this control system minimizes loss in the control performance and gives enough time for operators to take appropriate action in order to reduce the risk of safety hazards and avoid severe consequences of the fault. The unavoidable penalty of degradation in control performance was found to be acceptable.