First Steps towards Automatic Entering of Inland Waterway Locks using Precise Point Positioning and Nearfield Sensors

Abstract

: Inland navigation and shipping is an important pillar of the European Transport System. To support the skipper, advanced driver assistant functions need to be developed. One of the most challenging tasks within inland navigation is the passing of a waterway lock, where typically, a ship of 11.40 m width and 100-200m length has to enter a 12m wide lock chamber. The project SCIPPPER (2018-2021) aims at the development of an assistance system used for automatically entering/exiting a lock within. For such a system all propulsion and steering devices of the vessel have to be controlled simultaneously including rudder, engine and thrusters. This requires very accurate and reliable information about ship's position, velocity and orientation. For this purpose the combined usage of absolute positioning using Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) and relative positioning using near field sensors is planned. In order to achieve the required accuracies Precise Point Positioning (PPP) techniques will be applied. This project is planned to be a pilot project for the usage of SSR (State Space Representation) corrections provided by the SAPOS (Satelliten Positionierungsdienst der deutschen Landesvermessung) reference station network. This paper will give an overview of the current status of the developments in the SCIPPPER project including the definition of requirements, the overall system design and first technology developments and results of test trials.