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LAESSI

Project Overview

Within the project LAESSI (Control and Assistance Systems to Enhance the Safety of Navigation in Inland Waterways), which is funded by the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (Bundesministerium für Wirtschaft und Energie, BMWi), efficient navigation assistance functionalities for the inland waterway transport will be developed. The application of these novel functionalities aims at the enhancement of safety and efficiency of inland waterway transport by reducing the risk of collisions. The need for this is indicated by a number of recent accidents involving inland vessels.

Specifically, the project focuses on the development of the following navigation assistance functionalities: bridge approach warning system, guidance assistance and mooring assistance including the associated Conning Display.

• The bridge approach warning system should provide a timely warning signal to the skipper, whenever the vessel and particularly the wheelhouse or the radar mast cannot safely pass under the bridge. A possible warning has to be issued several hundred meters before the bridge is reached in order to ensure a sufficient reaction time.

• Fig. 1 The barge PAULA after the collision with the Süderelb bridge (Source: TV Elbnews)

  For the mooring assistance the position and attitude of the vessel has to be linked to the surroundings of the vessel. The skipper should get an accurate representation of the actual situation, in particular, the current distances to piers and other vessels and will be supported by this information during the maneuvers.   
• The guidance assistance will relax the load on the skipper during the on route navigation of the ship. A highly accurate and integrity tested positioning information serves as a basis for this functionality.
• The Conning Display will present the motion of the ship in a clear form. Especially, the skipper has to be promptly informed about the relevant changes of the motion. For this purpose it is not only necessary to provide a very accurate position and attitude information of the vessel, but it is also important to consider the information from the propulsion systems as well as the influence of the wind and current.

The essential basis for the aforementioned functionalities is the provision of reliable and comprehensive nautical information. This includes the position, attitude and movement of own vessel with the associated integrity information, exact and valid electronic charts (maps) as well as the information regarding the situation in navigational area (construction sites, accidents, water levels) and characteristics of the infrastructure (e.g., dimensions of the bridges and locks).

The joint research initiative LAESSI is led by the company in-innovative navigation GmbH and will be pursued with a unique combination of core competences from Alberding GmbH, Fachstelle der Wasser- und Schifffahrtsverwaltung für Verkehrstechniken and DLR.

The work of the DLR in this project focuses on the provision of reliable position, navigation and timing information (PNT) of the vessel itself. The challenges lie in the development of algorithms, which are able to cope with difficult environmental conditions for satellite-based navigation systems, such as shadowing and multipath when navigating under bridges and in locks. Furthermore, the warning functionality for bridge passage requires a high accuracy not only for the horizontal position, but also for the vertical one. In order to address both challenges, the DLR will pursue an approach of phase-based GNSS positioning supported by complementary sensors, like inertial sensors.

Funding

The project is funded by the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWi) under grant number: 03SX402D.
  
Project Duration

October 2015 – September 2017