Ship docking assisting apparatus and ship docking assisting method

A ship docking assisting apparatus that assists docking of a ship by outputting ship information related to the ship to an assist target device, the ship docking assisting apparatus comprising:

• a storage to store information;
• an imager mounted on the ship and provided at a front portion of a ship body, which is a front half of the ship body, so as to take an image only in front and forward of the ship body while the ship body is moved forward in a ship body front-rear direction by a propulsion unit;
• and
• a ship docking assist processor configured or programmed to assist docking of the ship and including an approaching operation to cause the ship to approach a shore until the ship is positioned parallel or perpendicular to the shore, and a docking operation, different from the approaching operation, performed after the ship approaches the shore by the approaching operation to cause the ship to make contact with or come closer to the shore, the ship docking assist processor being configured or programmed to assist docking by:
• acquiring image information of a docking target and a water surface in front of the ship body taken only by the imager provided at the front portion of the ship body during the approaching operation, the docking target being a shore at which the ship is docked or an object in a vicinity of the shore and is used as a mark when the ship is docked;
• calculating at least one relative positional relationship that indicates a relationship in distance and direction between the ship body of the ship and the docking target, from among a plurality of sets of the image information including the docking target and the water surface, which are acquired while the ship body is moved forward in the ship body front-rear direction by the propulsion unit;
• storing the at least one relative positional relationship in the storage as the ship information;
• outputting the ship information stored in the storage to the assist target device;
• and
• continuing the approaching operation and the docking operation until the ship is docked.