A COLLISION AVOIDANCE EXPERT SYSTEM FOR INTEGRATED NAVIGATION SYSTEM AND ITS BRUSH-UP

In order to satisfy the demand for highly automated and fully safe ship operation, it is desirable that an Integrated Navigation System (INS) has an intelligent decision-making supporting function. Such a function can propose a proper maneuvering action to operators. Of course, the operators should decide a final action by their judgment supported by other available supporting functions of the INS. To implement such a supporting function, the authors have developed a collision avoidance expert system for such the INS. In this paper, the structure of developed knowledge bases, the inference procedure, the brush-up of the developed knowledge bases using ship handling simulator, and some simulation results are reported. Some concepts and methods concerned to this knowledge base system, such as the classification of the target ships, the unblocking scope of the ship handling space and the prediction of plural actions of target ships, are proposed. The conclusion is that the developed collision avoidance expert system possesses sophisticated problem solving ability for the collision avoidance and it can provide an effective support for operators' decision-making.