The Development of Ship Watch Keeping Supporting Aids

This study deals with the development of ship watch keeping supporting aids that will be useful for ship deck officers in recognizing navigational harmful obstacles such as sea marks and small floating objects on the sea. The developed watch keeping supporting aids is made up of four components; a composite video sensor to produce video signal, a laser distance measuring part, a Pan/Tilt part and a central control part. The system was installed in a ship in order to verify its performance of the recognition ability on the sea. The comparison was made between the recognition ability of the system and that of watch keeping deck officers’. The image from the watch keeping supporting system was found to be more recognizable than that of a binocular telescope within a 5 km distance. The newly suggested system is expected to be used to recognize small dangerous floating objects more easily when navigation deck officers have a duty of watch keeping for navigation especially near harbor area.