Tuning the Heading Controller for the Ship’s Autopilot

Abstract

Selected methods of PID settings for the heading controller in the ship’s autopilot are presented. The consistency of the design is possible due to the fact that the Nomoto model was used for the ship and thanks to the elimination of the time constant of the object by the controller, so that the closed system becomes a 2nd order system. In two cases, it was additionally assumed that the system is to have a double time constant, differing in a given ratio r from the time constant of the object. It has been shown that the heading controller designed in this way provides critical aperiodic waveforms at a step change in the setpoint value and suppresses environmental disturbances better than standardly tuned controllers.