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US 5,235,927 AGranted
Autopilot system
AssigneeNautech Limited
InventorsHarjit Singh, Andrew W. Clark
Life of this patent
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AssigneeNautech Limited
InventorsHarjit Singh, Andrew W. Clark
Estimating the term…
An autopilot system for a vessel such as a boat has an autopilot unit connected via a drive to the rudder or other direction determining means of the vessel. When the autopilot unit is operating normally, direction information from e.g. a heading sensor is processed by the autopilot unit and the drive is controlled by the autopilot unit to determine the appropriate position of the rudder. The rudder is also linked to a steering wheel or other manual steering arrangement. When the steering wheel is moved during normal operation of the autopilot unit, this causes an interference with the control of the rudder by the drive and, if this interference has sufficient magnitude and duration, this triggers override of the autopilot unit, returning the vessel to manual control via the steering wheel. The override may alternatively be triggered by detection of rudder movement by a sensor.
An autopilot system for a marine vessel comprising a steering system including means for determining the direction of movement of the vessel and user operable means for controlling the direction determining means, an autopilot unit for automatically controlling the direction determining means, and means for overriding the control of the direction determining means by the autopilot unit;
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.