Driving Assistance Systems for Inland Vessels based onHigh Precision DGNSS

Inland shipping is an important pillar of the German transport system; however the challenges of inland navigation due to dense traffic, increasing ship dimension, reduced manoeuvre space and visibility are multifaceted and increasing. About 20 to 30 collisions per year, partially caused by carelessness, demonstrate the necessity of driving assistance systems for inland waterway applications. The project LAESSI (Guiding and assistance systems to improve safety of navigation on inland waterways) aims to develop efficient navigation assistance functions for inland waterway transport. Therefore, nautical information like position, height and heading has to be determined. One main task of the project is the development of a bridge collision warning system, which could provide a timely alert to the skipper, whenever the vessel will not safely pass the bridge. The paper will inform about the derived requirements and will give an overview about the overall system architecture. In addition the paper provides information about a high accuracy positioning system, based on RTK technology. Further a new com-munication concept based on VDES standards will be described. Finally the paper will report about first results gained in demonstration areas at the rivers Moselle and Main.