Determination of Optimal Route Based on AIS and Planned Route Information

The authors have newly developed the “Port Traffic Management System (PTMS)”. The PTMS provides each ship with the detailed planned routes of all the ships entering/leaving the port. This system also has a function to predict the encounter situations between own ship and other ships in the future. Based on information of the present positions, speeds and planned routes of the own ship and other ships, it is possible to predict when and where the own ship will have dangerous encounters with other ships in the future. The software of PTMS was developed from 2001. Then onboard experiments using small training ships equipped with actual AIS were performed in June 2003. From the results of these onboard experiments, the usefulness of PTMS was clarified. In addition to these onboard experiments, the effectiveness of PTMS was confirmed by comprehensive simulator experiments. In the simulator experiments, captains/pilot maneuvered a training ship/container ship in congested waters using PTMS. [t was assumed that all ships have PTMS and send their planned routes. After the simulator experiments, captains/pilot suggested that it is very beneficial if the optimal route of own ship can be automatically calculated. In response to this suggestion, software to calculate the optimal route of own ship using Dynamic Programming was developed. This software calculates the minimum time route from the present position to the destination keeping the danger of collision against other ships under predetermined level. From the result of calculations for multi-encounter situations, it was confirmed that the developed software can provide safe and time-saving route.