Design And Implementation Of Automatic Signaling System In Controlled Waterway

The controlled waterway in the upper reaches of the Yangtze River is too narrowto provide clear vision for ships coming and going. So ships can only run in one wayaccording to the signal sent by the signal station of the controlled waterway. Thesignalman bases on rules to send access signal command by showing one of the fivesignal flags according to the actual situations of ships. Currently, at the signal station,manual motor control is adopted to send signal by lifting or lowering signal flag. Thissingle and backward method consumes much labor of signalman, far away frommeeting the needs of "Digital Yangtze River" and "Smart Waterway".This thesis designs and develops an Automatic Signaling System in ControlledWaterway (ASSCW) which is a part of the project of "Intelligent CommandAutomation System of Traffic in Controlled Waterway (ICASTCW)" The mainresearch work includes as follows.Firstly,the demands on ASSCW were analyzed according to the goal of theICASTCW;Secondly,considered the limits of signaling by signal flags,an automatic signalingsystem was Proposed and built which composed of the two sub-systems: automaticsignaling of the signal flag and VHF automatic voice signaling.Thirdly,according to the demands of automatic ascending and descending of flags，signaling controller, signal drive controller and motor gear were designed.Next,auto voice recording function was obtained by transforming the audio andcontrol circuit of VHF; by using TTS technology, automatic release of traffic signalwas realized through transforming traffic command to voice and broadcast via VHF..Finally,the ASSCW were Integrated into the ICASTCW,and were applied in field.The site application shows that the ASSCW can follow the access instruction ofthe ICASTCW to realize automatic ascending and descending of flags and VHF voicesignaling, and thus realize the intelligent signaling at the controlled waterway.