Rakhshanda Huda, will be working on her MASc with our motion compensation system. Her research will examine the dynamic coupling between the host vessel and the crane. Rakhshanda joins us from .

Carlos Prata Ramos, Benjamin Zuniga-Rodriguez and Brianna Hines are working in the lab as undergraduate volunteers. They are working on the development a new UAV flight simulator that our team can use for simulations. The simulator that they are developing will be used in advancing our flight Uncrewed Aerial Vehicle (UAV) projects and our custom Gesundheit drone.

Maddisan Latulippe is working to restructure our internal document, file and CAD management systems for CUSP.

Finally, our newest team members: Sarah Muzika, Claire Breton and Dana Abou Khamis. They are undergraduate volunteers. Sarah, Claire and Dana are learning about our various software platforms before they start their individual tasks.

Earlier this year, Cassidy Westin successfully defended his PhD titled . His research received CSME Award for outstanding PhD work! Stay tuned for the upcoming publications that we are working on.

We also have a few new publications this year. So, check out our publication list to see the latest works.

If you are interested in working in the lab or have a project that you think that we might be interested in collaborating on, please reach out and contact us. Additionally, you can also contact our team members to learn more about their work.

Cornelius Liburd and Eric Giroux will be working on flight system in the lab. Specifically, Cornelius is developing the drone hardware and capture system for Gesundheit. While Eric will be responsible for the flight controller as he also looks for further improve our autonomous landing systems.

Scott Edwards will be working on marine systems to further improve our motion compensation algorithms. You can learn more about the various motion compensations systems we have in our media and publications pages.

Mark Reckzin is working on the terrestrial side of things on our on-going deburring project.

Our Gesundheit drone, is a custom aerial vehicle with sensors to detect and track whales. It is also able to fly through whale blows at the optimal moment. The figure above is a schematic of the process; starting at the lefthand side, Gesundheit acquires a target via onboard sensors and lowers to a safe standoff distance > 5m to track the whale or surrogate. During tracking, Gesundheit will utilize a neural network object recognition to identify the specific whale species. The identification will be based on the whale’s size, shape, and blow characteristics. Additionally, based on the identified whale species, Gesundheit will continually optimize a descent path to collect a biological sample. At an opportune whale blow, Gesundheit will start its autonomous dive to collect the sample and return to base. During our development phase, we will track and use Whale Achoo, our existing whale-blow surrogate.

In October Steffan’s paper: won BEST STUDENT PAPER. The paper was presented at the American Automatic Control Council (AACC) and International Federation of Automatic Control (IFAC) conference on Modeling, Estimation and Control Conference (MECC). At the conference, Steffan was also invited to give a talk at the “Rising Star’s Special Session” on his paper: .

In December Wade MacMillan successfully defended his MASc: Contour Following and Trajectory Planning for Robotic Deburring. Wade’s work has also been published, in the CIRP Journal of Manufacturing Science and Technology. His excellent work was recognized by his thesis committee and is nominated for a University Medal!

1. Martin I. A., Irani R. A. (2022) Self-Tuning Anti-Sway Control For Shipboard Cranes Providing Combined World and Deck-Frame Compensation, Ocean Engineering — IN PRESS.
2. Lowell S., McPhee J., Irani R. A. (2022) , Applied Ocean Research. Volume 121, 103065.
3. McKenzie R. A., Irani R. A. (2022). . Mechanism and Machine Theory. Volume 168, 104573.

You can have a look at our other recent publications too as 2021 was a productive year.

In January we welcomed Eric Giroux onboard who is our newest MASc Student. He will be working to help develop the hardware and software systems of our Uninhabited Autonomous Vehicle (UAV) platform. The work will build upon our novel for maritime applications and transition the work from simulation to hardware implementation.

Publications

• Grael Miller has two new publications in the International Journal of Advanced Manufacturing Technology:
  • Miller G., Irani R. A., Ahmadi M. (2021) . The International Journal of Advanced Manufacturing Technology. doi: 10.1007/s00170-021-07830-9
  • Miller G., Irani R. A., Ahmadi M. (2021) . The International Journal of Advanced Manufacturing Technology v. 115, pg.199–212. doi: 10.1007/s00170-021-07070-x

Congratulations

• Stephanie Lowell completed her and is now working on her PhD. She will further explore the wave maker theory and to develop a ship mounted tool to continuously map the ocean surface in real-time.
• Congratulations to Ryan McKenzie who completed his work with our team and has now joined .

New Students

• For the summer we welcomed several new students:
  • Nadiya Scratchley, a second year student who is joining our team through the ±õ-°ä±«¸é·¡±«³§Ìý±è°ù´Ç²µ°ù²¹³¾ and a co-op placement. Her work is centred around the initial design of a new docking system for subsea ROVs.
  • Mohammad Almalak, a recent graduate who is also joining through the ±õ-°ä±«¸é·¡±«³§Ìý±è°ù´Ç²µ°ù²¹³¾. His work focuses on forward and inverse dynamics of a novel tensegrity robotic manipulator.
  • Cornelius Liburd, a forth year student joined our group as a guest this summer so that he can smoothly transition into a directed studies and an eventual MASc. His work will develop the hardware to test our theoretical methods of autonomous landings of aerial vehicles on maritime vessels.
  • Eric Giroux, a recent graduate from the University of Alberta will be joining us in January of 2022. He will begin his MASc which will also examine autonomous landings of aerial vehicles on maritime vessels.

Stephanie’s thesis “Sensitivity analysis and experimental validation of plunger-type wavemakers modelled with a steady flow” will be posted online in the future.

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Cable–sheave systems are commonly used on marine vessels for lifting and towing applications. As a result of the motion of the vessel, the cable can detach from the surface of the sheave. This paper presents a finite element model of a towed cable system based on the Absolute Nodal Coordinate Formulation. The model includes the interaction of the cable with the sheave surface in order to examine variations in the contact forces. Furthermore, a three-dimensional description of the sheave geometry is implemented in order to accurately model the contact forces as the vessel undergoes six degree-of-freedom motion. To assess the performance of the model, the simulated cable behavior is compared to small scale experimental measurements. Finally, a case study which demonstrates the simulated cable detachment behavior for a full scale system is discussed.

You can learn more about the research work we do in our in the aerial,Ìý³Ù±ð°ù°ù±ð²õ³Ù°ù¾±²¹±ôÌý²¹²Ô»åÌýmaritimeÌý»å´Ç³¾²¹¾±²Ô²õ.

Grael successfully defended his MASc titled, “Pilot Study for Cutting Force Model of Robotic Deburring” and a copy thesis will be posted online in the future.

Martin I. A., Irani R. A. (2021) . Mechanical Systems and Signal Processing, v. 153, 107441 .

Abstract:

This paper addresses the deficiency of research in anti-sway control for high degree of freedom (DOF) shipboard cranes by developing a dynamic model and anti-sway control system for a seven-DOF shipboard knuckle boom crane, mounted aboard a vessel that experiences six-DOF ship motion. The dynamic model provides fidelity beyond what is typically seen in literature, including the mass and inertia of the hydraulic actuators, sheaves and winch, along with internal actuator dynamics and a realistic cable fall angle. The crane’s kinematics are derived using both the standard transformation matrix approach and with dual quaternions, and the equations of motion obtained with the Lagrange approach. To provide anti-sway control, a self-tuning anti-sway trajectory modifier is combined with a nonlinear sliding mode controller and a nonlinear trajectory optimizer. Tested in simulation on a ship with six-DOF motion at sea state 6, the system with self-tuning disabled provided a 64% reduction in the average root-mean-square-error (RMSE) between the desired and actual payload positions across the x and y trajectories. Allowing the anti-sway trajectory modifier to self-tune provided a 74% reduction in RMSE under the same conditions. When a 5 kN disturbance force was applied to the payload, the system without self-tuning showed a 58% reduction in the average RMSE, while with self-tuning enabled showed a 77% reduction in RMSE. The self-tuning anti-sway control system was also shown to be robust to errors in system parameters, where errors up to ±20% in the simulated crane resulted in a maximum increase of average RMSE of only 6.3%. Within simulation, the anti-sway control system is shown to be highly effective at tracking a time-varying payload trajectory for a seven-DOF knuckle boom crane and reducing undesired payload motion, and is shown to be robust to both sudden disturbances and errors in system parameters.

Check out our other publications and videos of the some of our systems in action.