A reduction of a controller set of switched controller for positioning of a drillship on a sea surface

In the paper a multicontroller-based switchable control system for nonlinear MIMO plants is presented. The control system synthesis is carried out by linearization of the adopted nonlinear plant model at its operating “points”. Thus the considered structure contains a collection of linear feedback controllers. In the first stage of the adopted method a great number of controllers is synthesized. The paper discuss problems with reduction of such controller set to make it smaller and possible to implement the system in e.g. constrained memory of programmable automation devices. As an example a nonlinear model of a drilling vessel in three degrees of freedom (3DOF) on a sea surface is used as a MIMO plant to be controlled. Here the controller set depends on the preset ship yaw angle and the velocity of the sea current. The methods of reduction and their possible results are compared and discussed.