Towards an Automatic Entering of Inland Waterway Locks

Abstract

For the development of autonomous inland water shipping two main approaches can be distinguished: a) the more revolutionary way, the development of a fully autonomous vessel from the scratch and ii) the more evolutionary way, the step by step introduction of advanced driver assistant functionalities. The second approach has the advantage, that all subsystems can be introduced and tested in the market at an early stage, while still having the driver on board. The SCIPPPER project (2018-2021) follows this approach and targets the development driver assistant functionality enabling an automatic entering of waterway locks, which is one of the most challenging tasks within inland navigation. Often large vessels have just some decimeters space available to enter the lock chamber. The visibility of the bow of the vessel is limited, the skipper is about 100 m away and often cargo like containers block the direct line of sight. The maneuvers during lock approach and entering of the lock chamber require very high concentration of the skipper and a good knowledge about the ships behavior. Typically all the propulsion and steering units of the vessel, main engine, rudder and bow thruster have to be operated in parallel. One lockage takes about 30 minutes and ships may pass up to 15 locks a day. Thus a skipper may spend a lot of time of his day with this very demanding task. It is the aim of the project SCIPPPER to enhance this situation and disburden the skipper from this demanding task. The aim is to realize an automatic entering and leaving of a lock by a typical inland vessel. To reach this goal several tasks are addressed: -Advanced GNSS processing techniques are used to provide accurate and integrity monitored information about the ships position and heading. GNSS processing will be based on PPP technology (precise point positioning). -The transmission capabilities of the new VDES system will be used to transmit GNSS corrections. In addition also information about the actual state of the lock will be provided to the assistance system on the vessel. -Close range sensors will provide information about relative position of the vessel when approaching and entering the lock cambers. This information will be fused with the GNSS results. -Advanced control algorithms will control work with all propulsion and steering devices of the vessel. -Measurements and the actual state of the vessel and its actuators will be presented to the skipper in a nautical display. -Entering of a lock chamber will be tested in detailed simulations before full scale trials are carried out. The proposed presentation will explain the different tasks in the project and present the designed setup for the overall system.