18-09-2025 - Lecture Hall J

PhD presentation

Safe Autonomous Navigation in Inland Waterways: Results from Diagnosis and Control

Abhishek Dhyani

Autonomy and digitalisation are paving the way for a safer, cleaner, and efficient inland waterway transportation system. The benefits of smart shipping include making the job safer for the human crew, reducing fuel consumption and better utilisation of the inland waterways. New challenges must, however, be addressed first to ensure that the underlying technologies can be incorporated safely.
In this presentation, I will discuss some results involving model-based design methodologies for ensuring safer autonomous navigation, namely: robust vessel maneuvering modelling and identification, multiple sensor fault diagnosis and autonomous control system design. The resulting algorithms prioritise safety, robustness and fault tolerance in the system design and onboard decision-making.

18-09-2025 - Lecture Hall J

PhD presentation

Modular Energy Management for Fuel Cell-Battery Shipboard Microgrids

Timon Kopka

The electrification of ship power systems plays a central role in the mobility transition towards sustainable transport solutions. It allows the integration of various power sources, energy storage systems, and intermittent generation. An increasing number of components with distinct characteristics shapes the notion of a shipboard microgrid which benefits from a modular approach in its design to reduce costs and uncertainties. DC distribution facilitates the modular design by simplifying the control, and, combined with power electronics interfaces, increases the controllability of power flows in the system.
To handle the increasing system complexity, we propose a distributed and predictive energy management approach, addressing the modular topology of future shipboard power systems and leveraging load power forecasting. Preliminary investigations show that a distributed, predictive energy management reaches a similar performance as a centralized implementation. For a modular shipboard power system, the proposed approach decreases both fuel and degradation costs with increasing performance gains for longer prediction horizons.