Fuzzy Reasoned Waypoint Controller for Automatic Ship Guidance

Guidance systems usually calculate the ship's desired course based on given waypoints or trajectory. In this paper, a fuzzy reasoned waypoint controller is discussed. The control laws considered here is similar to collision avoidance rules. However, instead of collision risk, nearness is reasoned by the fuzzy controller based on human operator's manipulating experience. Depending on the nearness of next and second next waypoint one at a time, fuzzy controller decides the desired heading. By this way, the necessity of calculating the circle of acceptance radius or path curvature separately at each turning point is eliminated. After getting the desired heading, as a course keeping controller, PD is used to correct the instantaneous heading. The proposed controller simplifies the total control design process and easily applicable to practical navigation path planning. Simulations with different sets of waypoints are carried out to justify the effectiveness of the proposed controller. Several experiment results are also included in this paper which validates the proposed control algorithm.