Structure and Functionalities of Ship Autopilot Simulator

Heading control, track control, rate of turn and turn radius are basic maneuvers executed by ship autopilots. The paper presents structure and functionalities of an autopilot simulator, written in ST language in CPDev environment. It runs both on PC and on ARM-based controller for anticipated real-time tests. Sample results of ship dynamics identification through zig-zag maneuver and of wave filtering by an observer are presented. The simulator has been developed in cooperation with a Dutch company.