Professor Thor I. Fossen
PhD Electical Engineering, MSc Marine Technology, Fulbright Alumni

Head of Automatic Control at the Centre for Ships and Ocean Structures (CeSOS)
Key Scientist SUP on Computational Methods in Nonlinear Motion Control

Co-Founder of Marine Cybernetics

Department of Engineering Cybernetics Norwegian University of Science and Technology NO-7491 Trondheim, Norway

BioSketch: I was born in 1963 in Bodø, Norway. I received my MSc Degree in Marine Technology in 1987 from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Trondheim and the PhD degree in Control Systems from NTNU in 1991. In the period 1989-1990 I pursued postgraduate studies as a Fulbright scholar in flight control at the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, University of Washington, Seattle. In 1993 I was appointed as a Professor in Guidance, Navigation and Control at the Department of Engineering Cybernetics where I am teaching, mathematical modelling of vessels and control theory. I have authored 200 scientific papers and 3 international textbooks.

I am one of the founders of Marine Cybernetics (MC) where I have been Vice President R&D in the period 2002 to 2007. Before 2002, I was senior scientific advisors for ABB, Kongsberg and MARINTEK. I have also been involved in the design of nonlinear dynamic positioning (DP) system for free-floating and moored ships, nonlinear and passive state estimators for marine vessels, autopilots, trajectory tracking and maneuvering control, identification of ship dynamics from sea-trials and strapdown DGPS/INS navigation systems. A patent for weather optimal positioning control of marine vessels was granted in 1998. This work received the Automatica Prize Paper Award in 2002. I have also been involved in the design of the SeaLaunch trim and heel correction systems. In 2008 I received the Arch T. Colwell Merit Award at the SAE 2008 World Congress for a paper entitled Nonlinear Observer for Vehicle Velocity Estimation. Three of my former PhD students, Dr. Jann Peter Strand (2000), Professor Ole Morten Aamo (2003) and Professor Roger Skjetne (2005) have received the ESSO award for best PhD thesis at NTNU.

Fields of Research [Publications]

• Hydrodynamics and Mathematical Modelling of Rigid-bodies, Marine Vehicles and Flight Vehicles
• Simulator technology for marine applications
• Hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) testing of control systems
• Nonlinear Stability, Control and Observer Design
• Autopilots, Dynamic Positioning and Thruster Assisted Mooring
• Control of Underwater Vehicles
• Automotive systems
• Control of Spacecraft and Flight Vehicles
• Nonlinear and Constrained Control Allocation
• Weather Optimal Control Systems for Ships and Rigs
• GPS and Inertial Navigation Systems (INS)
• Propulsion Control

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