Guidance control of vessels using minimum time control

In recent years, serious problems have arisen in coastal shipping along in Japan, because lack of expert sailors and the successors have gone on the increase year by year. Since such state of harbor operations has required immediately improving the technology of operation, authors proposed a solution to contribute to the development of the coastal shipping and the decrease of marine casualties. Taking variation of harbor circumstances into consideration, authors proposed a minimum time harbor operation system for coastal vessels in this paper. This system must make them possible of time shortening of harbor operation, load reduction for sailors and fuel consumption of vessels as well. A minimum time maneuvering method was obtained by mathematical optimal solutions with SCGRA method. The effectiveness of this new operation system was confirmed through some actual ship experiments of steering by the captains.