Research On Autopilot Based Upon PC/104 And CAN Bus

The maneuverability is one of the important capabilities of a ship; the ship's maneuverability is closely related with the safety of navigation, economic, combat effectiveness and vitality of warship. The navigation will miss basic security, once the ship lost maneuvering capability. Approved controllability is an important means to improve the combat effectiveness, so the requirements of manipulations to warships are higher.To acquire controllability and driver technology of the ship, mankind has been fighting for centuries and has been achieved many accomplishments: from manually to automated of ship control, the automation system from a single to integrated automation is increasing, from simple control device into the architecture armed with computer and network; Ship control has been formed an independent scientific, a group of scholars engaged in the theoretical study, system design and engineering aspects both in the domestic and international.Rudder is the largest ship maneuvering devices, and autopilot is one instrument to achieve a function of automatic control the ship course heading. The performance of it directs impact on the ship's maneuverability, economy and security.This paper introduced the ship's maneuverability and automatic steering instrument development at first, and then PC/104 CAN bus technology was introduced and described.In the third chapter of this paper the hardware design about autopilot and its components is shown, and the key technologies: CAN intelligent nodes and LCD driver circuit is described in detail. The fourth chapter of autopilot discussed related software, and gives some important program segments. Finally, the automatic steering instrument related issues were discussed.In this paper, Autopilot based on the PC/104 CAN Bus can integrate the signals of GPS, compass, rudder angle sensor, actual travel direction, predetermine course and constraint conditions and get the command signal by computing. And the signal sent to the actuator to control steering to the designated angle through CAN Bus, then the ship sail along the course navigation. At the same time, a track control function and adaptive control algorithm to reduce the relative frequency of the rudder roll, the failure rate and maintenance costs are reduced, while also increasing the safety of the ship. The ship's maneuverability, economic and security greatly enhanced.