On the influence of ship motion prediction accuracy on motion planning and control of robotic manipulators on seaborne platforms

Robotic manipulators on non-inertial platforms, such as ships, have to endure large inertial forces due to the non-inertial motion of the platform. When the non-inertial platform´s motion is known, motion planning and control algorithms can eliminate these perturbations-in fact, in some situations the motion planning algorithms can even leverage the inertial forces to more cheaply move to a target point. However, for many non-inertial platforms, the motion is unknown. In this paper we investigate how prediction errors and the choice of the prediction horizon affect the motion planning and control of robots mounted on a non-inertial base with a particular focus on seaborne platforms. We study the following three aspects: (i) We study prediction of ship motion and how prediction errors affect the motion planning and control of the manipulator. (ii) We evaluate the relationship between prediction accuracy and control. In particular, we study what prediction horizon length is useful for motion planning and control. We also consider how uncertainties in the ship motion predictions map to uncertainties in the future state of the robot and how to include the variance in the cost function to increase the optimal horizon length. (iii) Finally, we study a receding horizon approach, which re-solves the optimal control problem on-line over a horizon as determined to be meaningful from (ii). Several simulations are presented and, to our knowledge, for the first time experiments of ship-manipulator systems based on real ship motion data are presented.