An adaptive steering system for a ship

This paper describes an adaptive steering system for ships that was developed by Nippon Kokan K.K. in cooperation with Yokogawa Hokushin Electric Corporation. The purpose of the system is to improve a ship's automatic steering performance under a variety of operational and environmental conditions. The techniques of hill climbing and model reference adaptive control are used in the course-keeping and course-changing modes, respectively. The results of related full-scale experiments with ocean-bound bulk carriers are presented.