US 10,378,905 B2Granted

Auxiliary berthing method and system for vessel

AssigneeNanjing University 5D Technology Co., Ltd.

InventorsXi Zhu, Yuanyuan Li, Feng Yan, Xiang Li, Xun Cao, Weisong Pan, Jianwen Ding, Jibin Wang, Jun Wang, Chen Chen, Dapeng Li, Wei Li, Wenzhu Wang

Life of this patent

Estimating the term…

patentgrep

Loading patent…

Abstract

The present invention provides an auxiliary berthing method and system for a vessel. In the berthing method, by a solar blind ultraviolet imaging method, a position and an attitude of a vessel relative to a shoreline of a port berth during berthing are calculated by at least two solar blind ultraviolet imaging modules according to light signals received by a solar blind ultraviolet light source array arranged in advance on the shore. Further, when more than three solar blind ultraviolet imaging modules are used, in the method and device of the present invention, a normalized correlation algorithm and a data fusion algorithm are used to improve the accuracy of the position and attitude data of the vessel.

Claims10

Dependent claims

A method for berthing a vessel, comprising:

providing at least two solar blind ultraviolet imaging modules on the vessel;
receiving, by the at least two solar blind ultraviolet imaging modules, light signals transmitted by a solar blind ultraviolet light source comprising an array of solar blind ultraviolet lamps deployed on shore and defining a target lattice coordinate system;
processing the received light signals by a signal processor to obtain a translation vector between each of the at least two solar blind ultraviolet imaging modules and a berth;
calculating a vector representation of a line connecting the at least two solar blind ultraviolet imaging modules in the target lattice coordinate system;
obtaining, according to an arrangement of the at least two solar blind ultraviolet imaging modules on the vessel, a vector representation of the vessel in the target lattice coordinate system;
calculating, according to a preset or measured vector representation of the berth in the target lattice coordinate system, an attitude angle of an axis of the vessel relative to the berth;
and
determining a position and an attitude of the vessel relative to the berth,
wherein a number of the at least two solar blind ultraviolet imaging modules is three or more, and position and/or angle information of the vessel relative to the berth measured by each solar blind ultraviolet imaging module is integrated to obtain a numerical value representing the position relationship between the vessel and the berth, and
wherein the signal processor integrates position data of a reference point on the vessel relative to the berth or azimuth angle data of the vessel by a normalized correlation algorithm, then performs global error analysis to obtain a threshold for an average confidence value of a detection system consisting of the at least two the solar blind ultraviolet imaging modules and the confidence of each solar blind ultraviolet imaging module, filters positioning data with a lower confidence by using the threshold to obtain a final confidence weight for each solar blind ultraviolet imaging module, and performs weighted averaging on each solar blind ultraviolet imaging module by using the confidence weight.

7 more elements

A system for berthing a vessel, comprising:

a solar blind ultraviolet light source comprising an array of solar blind ultraviolet lamps deployed on shore;
at least three solar blind ultraviolet imaging modules arranged on the vessel, each solar blind ultraviolet imaging module comprising a solar blind ultraviolet receiver configured to receive light signals from the solar blind ultraviolet light source and convert the light signals into corresponding electrical signals;
and
a signal processor electrically connected to the at least two solar blind ultraviolet imaging modules and, in use, receives the electrical signals transmitted by the solar blind ultraviolet imaging modules, processes the electrical signals to obtain a translation vector of each solar blind ultraviolet imaging module relative to the solar blind ultraviolet light source, further obtains a distance from the vessel to a target lattice from the translation vector, and calculates the position of each solar blind ultraviolet imaging module on the vessel relative to a berth,
wherein the signal processor integrates the obtained coordinate and/or attitude angle data to obtain corresponding coordinate data and/or attitude angle data representing the position of the vessel relative to the berth,
wherein the signal processor is designed to use a normalized correlation algorithm;
a vector pi(xi,yi,zi) is used to represent the ith group of position data among N groups of position data, which are subjected to angular and spatial transformation, returned by N solar blind ultraviolet imaging module detection subsystems, where i=1, 2, 3 . . . N, and x, y and z are three-axis coordinates of the N solar blind ultraviolet imaging modules;
and, the position data, which is subjected to angular and spatial transformation, is obtained by the following method:
when the relative positions of all the solar blind ultraviolet imaging modules and the attitude angle of the vessel are known, the measured position data of different measurement modules are converted into the measured position data of a same measurement module based on a spatial position relationship and through spatially geometric transformation;
the normalized correlation algorithm used by the signal processor comprises the following specific steps:
using a Normalized Correlation Coefficient (NCC) to represent the confidence of the position data returned by the N detection subsystems:
NCC
⁡
(
p
i
)
=
∑
j
=
1
⁢
⁢
i
≠
j
N
⁢
p
i
·
p
j

p
i

⁢

p
j

=
∑
j
=
1
⁢
⁢
i
≠
j
N
⁢
x
i
⁢
x
j
+
y
i
⁢
y
j
+
z
i
⁢
z
j
x
i
2
+
y
i
2
+
z
i
2
⁢
x
j
2
+
y
j
2
+
z
j
2
(
16
)
j=1, 2, 3, . . . N;
setting a threshold G for the average confidence value of the detection system consisting of all the solar blind ultraviolet imaging modules, and filtering the position data with a lower NCC according to the threshold G to obtain a final system confidence weight w, which is expressed as follows:
w
⁡
(
p
i
)
=
{
NCC
⁡
(
p
i
)
,
NCC
⁡
(
p
i
)
>
G
0
,
NCC
⁡
(
p
i
)
≤
G
;
(
17
)
then, obtaining the final fitted position data on the position of the vessel:
p
result
=
∑
i
=
1
N
⁢
w
⁡
(
p
i
)
×
p
i
∑
i
=
1
N
⁢
w
⁡
(
p
i
)
.
(
18
)

169 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.

Facts

Application: 15/543,934Filed 28 Sep 2015
Priority: CN 2015 1 002134215 Jan 2015
Published: US 2018/0010917 A111 Jan 2018
Granted: 13 Aug 2019
Term ends: Not estimatedThe source records don’t support an estimate.

Classification14 codes

G01C 21/203
Instruments for performing navigational calculations: specially adapted for water-borne vessels
G06T 3/02
Geometric image transformations in the plane of the image: affine transformations
G06T 7/50
Image analysis: depth or shape recovery
G06T 7/77
Determining position or orientation of objects or cameras: using statistical methods