Use of GPS for a berthing guidance system

The research was conducted in view of automatic berthing of a large merchan t ship. This paper discusses the general concept of an automatic berthing s ystem. A GPS-based system, which provides the necessary information on posi tion, velocity, attitude (roll, pitch, and heading), angular velocity and t ime, will be a principal sensor in a berthing system. The tests were conduc ted on board a hydrographic sounding ship to obtain the information from a GPS-based system. The data was processed using the software where the algor ithms developed in this research are implemented. This paper also discusses various aspects concerning the real-time GPS-based system in relation to a n automatic berthing system, such as integration of sensors, port infrastru cture, training of crews.