Deep Reinforcement Learning Based Controller for Active Heave Compensation
arXiv:2104.05599
Abstract
Heave compensation is an essential part in various offshore operations. It is used in various applications, which include on-loading or off-loading systems, offshore drilling, landing helicopter on oscillating structures, and deploying and retrieving manned submersibles. In this paper, a reinforcement learning (RL) based controller is proposed for active heave compensation using a deep deterministic policy gradient (DDPG) algorithm. A DDPG algorithm which is a model-free, online reinforcement learning method, is adopted to capture the experience of the agent during the training trials. The simulation results demonstrate up to 10 % better heave compensation performance of RL controller as compared to a tuned Proportional-Derivative Control. The performance of the proposed method is compared with respect to heave compensation, offset tracking, disturbance rejection, and noise attenuation.
Accepted to the 13th IFAC Conference on Control Applications in Marine Systems, Robotics, and Vehicles (CAMS 2021)