A Prototype of a Cascade Ship Autopilot Implemented in the CPDev Environment

Abstract

Ship autopilots can be divided into conventional, only capable of maintaining a given heading, and advanced, which can additionally follow a „track” connecting the given navigation points along the ship’s route. The article presents the structure of the prototype autopilot of the ship implemented in the CPDev environment and the formulas allowing to determine the settings of the course controller (PID) and track controller (PI) in the cascade control. For each of them, individual design parameters were adopted to define the dynamics of the closed control loop. These rules were applied in the software of the autopilot prototype, created in cooperation with a Dutch company designing control and visualization systems for ships.