The ability of animals to find their way, without the benefit of mechanical or electronic aids to navigation, has fascinated humans for centuries. Relying on innate knowledge, coupled with the extraction of navigational data from the natural features of the universe, animals continually confound humans with their skills in locomotion. The magnetic compass, sun compass, strip maps, snapshots, target maps, temperature charts and star charts are known to feature in the overall animal navigation kit. Each species selects the most appropriate ‘map/chart’ and navigation kit for its environment.

The main problem in bringing autonomy to any vehicle lies in the design of a suitable guidance law. For truly autonomous operation, the vehicle needs to have a reliable Navigation, Guidance and Control (NGC) system of which the guidance system is the key element that generates suitable trajectories to be followed. In this review paper, various guidance laws found in the literature and their relevance to autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) are discussed. Since existing guidance laws for underwater vehicles have emulated from tactical airborne missile systems, a number of approaches for the missile guidance systems are considered. Finally, potential guidance strategies for AUVs are proposed.

The International Maritime Organization has mandated carriage requirements for VHF Automatic Identification System (AIS) on vessels over 300 tons by 2007 (IMO SOLAS: 1974 and IMO Resolution MSC.99(73)). The AIS will transmit a vessel's position and voyage data to other AIS-equipped vessels and shore-based authorities. It was envisioned that AIS data could enhance the safety of navigation by allowing vessels to quickly identify each other and use Digital Select Calling (DSC) to arrange maneuvers. We will discuss the history and the development of AIS, the technical issues surrounding its use by the mariner as a navigation tool and the pros and cons of the proposal by the US Coast Guard (USCG) to use AIS as a means of surveillance for Maritime Domain Awareness.

A theoretical analysis of the effects of dual frequency ionosphere propagation correction on GNSS code tracking noise is presented. The effect on tracking noise of using different combinations of the proposed Galileo signals for ionosphere propagation correction is investigated. It is concluded that, for the open or commercial service user, the Galileo signals E2-L1-E1 near to and around GPS L1 should be used to apply ionosphere propagation corrections to the E5 signals. This produces a tracking noise standard deviation about three times larger than that on an E5 signal alone. An ionosphere correction-smoothing algorithm is presented that reduces the tracking noise on the corrected pseudo-range measurements.

This paper assesses the capability of GPS to provide the level of safety required for different aircraft flight navigation operations. It presents an analysis of the protection offered against potential catastrophic GPS failures at system and user levels. This is followed by an assessment of the different approaches to augmenting GPS for civil air navigation. Results show the inadequacy of GPS as a system for real-time safety critical use.

The September 2002 issue of The Journal included a paper that implied that the US practice of negotiating collision avoidance manoeuvres by VHF had effectively been endorsed by the IMO. That view is challenged, by reference to the relevant provisions in the US legislation, the COLREGS and chapter IV of the SOLAS Convention. This paper also concludes that AIS will be a useful tool to provide additional information, but should not alter the way in which the COLREGS are to be applied.

The main problems faced by a dynamic model within a Kalman filter occur when the system experiences unexpected dynamic conditions, a change in data acquisition rate, or when the dynamics of the system are non-linear. To minimize the errors produced from dynamic modelling in unusual conditions, an extended dynamic model is developed in this paper, and its usefulness demonstrated through comparison of the performance of a Kalman filter's response to simulated data with a standard dynamic model and the extended dynamic model. The results show that, in use, the proposed extended dynamic model is superior to a standard dynamic model, due mainly to its ability to adapt to a wider range of dynamic conditions, which in turn ensures the optimization of the Kalman filter and the consequent generation of reliable positioning results.

Navigating in unfamiliar road environments is a common and demanding cognitive activity. If this cannot be accomplished successfully, there are implications for increased driver workload, delays due to navigation errors, potentially unsafe road behaviour such as late lane changes, and inappropriate traffic management. To enable successful navigation through such environments, it is necessary to understand what the navigation task entails, and what a driver's corresponding information requirements are. This paper reports the results of a study that sought to identify what information is used by drivers when navigating within a range of urban driving environments, how this information is used, and what the implications are for the design of navigation aids.

This paper discusses the ship's navigation function, navigation processes, and navigational information. The relationship between these concepts and their substance are analysed in depth. However, the primary aim of this paper is to consider how the various types of navigational information and their content might be brought together in a logically defined structure as a Ship's Information System.

A new navigation method, called a Line of Sight Counteraction Navigation (LOSCAN) algorithm has been introduced to aid manoeuvre decision making for collision avoidance based on a two-ship encounter. The LOSCAN algorithm is derived from an extension of the basic principle of traditional missile proportional navigation, recognising that the objective of the latter is target capture rather than target avoidance. The basic concept is to derive an acceleration command so as to increase the misalignment between the ships' relative velocity and the line-of-sight. The algorithm includes a risk assessment and the generation of appropriate navigation commands to manoeuvre own ship free of collision if a risk of collision exists. Numerical examples have been used to demonstrate the effectiveness of the algorithm. The relationship between the distance at the closest point of approach with respect to early warning distance, and with the norm of the acceleration, has also been analysed. In operation, the collision avoidance decision making process is a complicated problem, with its solution subject to ship states, practical dynamic constraints, Collision Avoidance Regulations (COLREGS), encountering ship manoeuvre coordination and human decision making factors. The proposed algorithm provides a consistent manoeuvre signal to aid decision-making.

In this study, an inverse Real Time Kinematic (RTK) GPS positioning approach is presented and discussed. GPS data from a remote receiver mounted on an unmanned vehicle is sent to the base station to determine the vehicle location at the centimetre level of accuracy in real time. Control of the vehicle's movement and manoeuvring can thus take place at the base station, which could be a few kilometres away, and the vehicle can be sent to specific locations to do certain tasks. Two GPS antennas were used in order to increase positioning reliability and estimate real time heading and pitch of the vehicle for better control. In addition, the vehicle was fitted with cameras with wireless video transmission to provide the operator with a good level of vision in different directions during operation. The main applications of such a system would be in exploration, breaching and clearance of minefields, and hazardous situations such as fire fighting of burning oil wells. The system design and techniques employed are discussed first. Issues addressed include antenna layout, data transmission, solution algorithm, and ambiguity resolution. The proposed system was mounted on a prototype vehicle and tested under different satellite visibility conditions. Results show that high positioning accuracy with reliable ambiguity resolution can be obtained with the developed approach if the number of observed satellites is 5 or more and PDOP is less than 5. Heading and pitch were determined within 0·2–0·3 degree using a 1·2 m long baseline. This performance can be improved as the length of the on-board baseline increases.

In Satellite-Based Augmentation Systems (SBAS), the correction messages are transmitted to the users' receivers via geostationary communication satellites (GEOS) at GPS L1 (1575·42 MHz) frequency. Severe scintillations in the equatorial zone disrupt geostationary satellite links even at L-band. Observations of scintillations at 1·5 GHz from Calcutta (22·58°N, 88·38°E geographic, 32°N magnetic dip), located near the crest of the equatorial anomaly in the Indian zone, show that scintillations occur in patches of duration varying from a few minutes to several hours. During the solar maximum years 1998–2000, severe scintillations (Scintillation Index [ges ]15 dB) were recorded for 48 hr 55 min (1·27%) out of the total observation time of 3868 hr 9 min in the local time interval 19 to 00 hrs. In order to have a fail-safe system, it is suggested that more than one geostationary satellite be used in SBAS so that, if one link is disrupted, the other can be used for transmission of correction messages to the GPS users. The minimum longitudinal separation between two GEOS required for reliable operation of SBAS has been estimated, from the cumulative distribution of scintillation patch duration, to be 57° in the Indian longitude zone.

GPS and low-cost INS sensors are widely used for positioning and attitude determination applications. Low-cost inertial sensors exhibit large errors that can be compensated using position and velocity updates from GPS. Combining both sensors using a Kalman filter provides high-accuracy, real-time navigation. A conventional Kalman filter relies on the correct definition of the measurement and process noise matrices, which are generally defined a priori and remain fixed throughout the processing run. Adaptive Kalman filtering techniques use the residual sequences to adapt the stochastic properties of the filter on line to correspond to the temporal dependence of the errors involved. This paper examines the use of three adaptive filtering techniques. These are artificially scaling the predicted Kalman filter covariance, the Adaptive Kalman Filter and Multiple Model Adaptive Estimation. The algorithms are tested with the GPS and inertial data simulation software. A trajectory taken from a real marine trial is used to test the dynamic alignment of the inertial sensor errors. Results show that on line estimation of the stochastic properties of the inertial system can significantly improve the speed of the dynamic alignment and potentially improve the overall navigation accuracy and integrity.

The increasing degree of integration of navigation systems and of complexity of these systems place new requirements on their use, test methods and specifications. These systems (Integrated Bridge Systems, Integrated Navigation Systems, Track Control Systems) contain a large number of functionalities, which have hitherto been carried out by equipment and units clearly delimited from one another. The purpose of this study is to develop a framework for Integrated Navigation Systems that enables an equipment-independent description of the requirements in order to take account of the large range of existing systems as well as future developments. In Part A, the functions fundamental to navigation operations are identified. A hierarchical approach is used to identify the global process task, task areas, tasks, functionalities and, finally, elementary functions. In Part B, a model of the ‘integrated navigation’ process is derived from the functional analysis. With the aid of the model it is possible to identify functional dependencies and resultant error chains. A ‘three-dimensional network’ is developed that represents the information flows between the functional units. In Part C, requirements on the testing of Integrated Navigation Systems are derived from the functional model. Independent of specific technical implementations, the starting points are information flows. The requirements the functions place on their respective input information are identified. Furthermore, categorisation of the test requirements is undertaken. This paper is a shortened version of the ‘Integrated Navigation Systems scope and model’. The complete paper (183 pages) may be obtained from the authors.