ADVANCED BRIDGE AUTOMATION

The past thirty years have seen great advances in many areas of the te chnologies used in naval vessels, Propulsion systems, machinery automa tion, and information management systems have all undergone revolution ary changes. The bridges of these ships have similarly seen the advent of many new sources of navigational and environmental data. The proce ss of correlating and interpreting all of this information has until n ow remained very labor-intensive, subject to human error at many stage s of the process. In response to this challenge, a suite of new equipm ent has been developed for distributing, displaying, correlating, and logging shipboard data. This equipment automates most of the low-level , routine tasks involved in navigating a vessel at sea, significantly reducing the stress and workload of bridge personnel. This gives the h umans on the bridge more time for doing the job that they do so much b etter than machines: making decisions. This paper focuses on the key t echnologies that are used in these new products and the advances in br idge design and automation they make possible. The benefits of these n ew capabilities to system designers, to shipbuilders, and to ship oper ators are also explored.