• Journal of the Society of Naval Architects of Korea
• /
• v.61 no.2
• /
• pp.98-105
• /
• 2024

Due to the low accuracy of measured data obtained from low-cost GNSS and IMU devices, it was hard to secure the required accuracy of the measured position and heading angle for autonomous navigation which was conducted by a model-scale marine mobility. In this paper, a localization technique using the Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) is proposed for coping with the issue. First of all, a position and heading angle estimator is developed using EKF with the assumption of a point mass model. Second, the measured data from GNSS and IMU, including position, heading angle, and velocity are used for the estimator. In addition, the heading angle is additionally obtained by comparing the LiDAR point cloud with map information for a temporal water tank. The newly acquired heading angle is integrated into the estimator as an additional measurement to correct the inaccuracy in the heading angle measured from the IMU. The effectiveness of the proposed approach is investigated using data acquired from preliminary tests of the model-scale autonomous marine mobility.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Marine Environment & Safety
• /
• v.27 no.2
• /
• pp.256-265
• /
• 2021

Ground, sea and air mobility, such as vehicles, ships, and airplanes, are generally operated by people. Based on the innovative development of autonomous decision-making systems and artificial intelligence (AI) following the recent fourth industrial revolution, research and development on maritime autonomous surface ships (MASS) is been actively performed around the world. Before the realization of the commercialization of MASS in international maritime transport, it is urgent to clarify the characteristics of this ship and its international legal status. This paper aims to analyze the concern of whether a ship without crew members will eventually be operated as a fully unmanned ship or can be recognized as a ship under international law as the number of crew members is gradually reduced owing to the development stage of autonomous ships. Consequently, based on the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) and the regulations of the International Maritime Organization (IMO), it was found that MASS has the same international legal status as general ships. In addition this paper presents the working principles of enacting and revising the IMO Conventions and international legal measures necessary for the safe operation of MASS.

• Journal of Navigation and Port Research
• /
• v.45 no.6
• /
• pp.352-359
• /
• 2021

This paper presents the definition and importance of ship-centric direct communication concerning ship safety of maritime autonomous and unmanned ships. It also proposes the concept of MX-S2X communication based on high frequency for wide-bandwidth technology and describes the design and simulation result for the physical layer of MX-S2X. It considered high-speed communication as well as overcoming maritime multi-path fading required to be resolved in the marine environment. The physical layer of MX-S2X communication was designed to overcome the occurrence of error-floor caused by multi-path fading even with receiving sufficient signal strength. To this purpose, a performance analysis was conducted on the physical layer by applying the channel model of the actual maritime communication environment. As a result of the performance analysis of the MX-S2X physical layer, it was confirmed that the BER error-floor observed in the VDE physical layer test was overcome, and it operated within the SNR 2dB degradation range compared to the AWGN channel. It is expected that this will show enough performance suitable for short-distance ship-centered direct communication and can be used for direct communication of maritime autonomous ships, unmanned ships, and group navigation of themshortly.