ALL DIRECTION APPROACH AUTOMATIC BERTHING CONTROLLER USING ANN (ARTIFICAL NEURAL NETWORKS)

This research deals with ANN(Artificial Neural Networks) and its application to automatic ship berthing. Due to the characteristic of a ship's manoeuvre comparing with other moving objects on land, it has been known that the automatic control for ship's berthing cannot cope with various berthing situations such as various port shape and approaching directions For these reasons, the study on automatic berthing using ANN usually have been carried out based on one port shape and predetermined approaching direction. In this paper, new algorithm with ANN controller was suggested to cope with these problems. Under newly suggested algorithm, the controller can select appropriate weights on the link of neural networks according to various situations, so the ship can maintain stable berthing operation even in different situations. Numerical simulations are carried out with this control system to find its improvement.