Concepts and System Requirements for Automatic Ship Operations*

The automation of ship operations is motivated by the today’s situation in global shipping and the resulting challenges for ensuring safety and efficiency. The presentation gives an overview of possible concepts and the necessary system requirements. The considerations from the perspective of control engineering are based on the experience gained in numerous projects of the our institute for the automation of manned and unmanned maritime surface vehicles. A simple structured automation module has as its core an architecture for guidance, navigation and control. The components within this architecture depend on the type of ship and the area of operation. Specific sensor equipment and automation solutions for three vehicles are introduced, the conventional manned German research vessel DENEB and two smaller unmanned surface vehicles. The general system requirements for automatic ship operations are discussed, with the focus on the differences and similarities exist in automation of unmanned vehicles and conventional vessels with responsible nautical personnel. The strategy of successive maneuver automation is further concreted. Individual results of automatically performed maneuvers with the three vehicles are described.