Experimental study on autonomous docking and hook-locking control for unmanned surface vehicle platforms

The challenge in autonomous docking and hook locking of multiple unmanned surface navigation platforms is to design an appropriate autonomous docking controller and ensure that the electric control hook can iteratively dock with the passive vessel. The current docking control solution for unmanned surface platforms needs to design an automatic tracking–generated trajectory and visual guidance docking system, capable of detecting the connection status after the hook-lock action to ensure a successful connection. However, most of the docking control designs for unmanned surface platforms pay more attention to the first-time success rate but pay less attention to the failures caused by complex and intelligent docking devices or environmental interference during docking. This article proposes a control strategy for autonomous docking and hook locking of two unmanned surface platforms. It guides the active vessel to the side of the passive vessel under the task requirements and triggers the visual docking control algorithm to complete the mechanical connection of the two joints. This method employs an iterative detection mechanism to improve the automatic hook and lock capability of both the active and passive vessels. The indoor pool and outdoor lake experiments demonstrate that the proposed method can successfully perform automatic iterative docking and hook locking, even in the presence of wave disturbance, showcasing the effectiveness of the proposed method.