LADRC-based Path Following Control for Cylindrical Drilling Platform Towing System

The towing process is the precondition to put a cylindrical drilling platform into use, which is saturated with risk due to the complexity of the towing environment, towing maneuvering, and the sudden and severity of accidents. Therefore, to control the cylindrical drilling platform towing system safely following a predefined course to reach the target see area becomes increasingly important. For environmental disturbances caused by wind and currents changing with time, a linear adaptive-disturbance-rejection-control (LADRC) based path following control method for cylindrical drilling platform towing system is proposed. Firstly, on the basis of both the mathematical modeling group model and the catenary model, three degrees of freedom nonlinear model of the cylindrical drilling platform towing system is built to obtain its real-time motion state. Then, a LADRC controller based on a two-dimensional trajectory tracking guidance law is designed for real-time path following control. Finally, simulation experiments of the path following control for the cylindrical drilling platform towing system is conducted. The results illustrate that the LADRC can effectively resist influences of the environmental disturbances and has a better path following performances than the traditional proportional–integral–derivative (PID) controller.