Life is more intense today than was shown in the film, and direction finding is somewhat more precise. We now know where aircraft are, rather than where they were some minutes earlier, (for at least most of the time!) and not every air traffic controller we employ speaks like an early BBC announcer.

Ships' bridge watchkeeping, although the prime task of the officer of the watch, makes very low task demands in terms of information processing and required speed of response compared to most other vigilance tasks. Consequently, performance of the visual lookout task is difficult to describe and evaluate systematically. Results from an on-board observational study show that lookout lapse periods can be economically described by simple mathematical models, which assist in comparison and evaluation of task performance.

In the early 1960s, Ferranti developed a 4-gimbal miniature inertial platform (approximately 8 inches diameter) for a number of applications, including the RAF Harrier and Phantom Inertial NavAttack system and for various satellite launcher projects. This platform used the Type 125 floated rate gyro (adapted from a design by Singer Kearfott, and originally referred to as Type M2519).

Primarily in response to airline pressures for fuel economies, ICAO, the International Civil Aviation Organization, established a study programme early in the 1980s to determine the feasibility of halving the vertical separation minimum (VSM) used above FL 290 to 1000 ft. This paper is the first of a 3-part article describing a European contribution to this programme. After outlining the aims and organization of the experimental work, it describes the choice of methodology available to measure height-keeping errors and gives an indication of the measurement accuracy achieved. Details of the data collections, the risk calculations performed and the factors found to affect height-keeping accuracy are given in Parts II and III. Overall, the work has shown that whereas it would be technically feasible to introduce a 1000-ft VSM in the North Atlantic region, other measures would be necessary before it could be used in continental airspace. Today, in certain areas, the need for a reduced VSM has become even more pressing in order to achieve the gains in airspace capacity necessary to handle rapidly growing volumes of air traffic.

The current state of the shipping and ship-building industries indicates that they are having difficulty surviving. This is especially so in Japan, which imports oil, ores, food and most of the materials used in manufacturing products for the domestic and foreign markets. The issue of maintaining stable and effective transportation overseas is, therefore, vital.

One of the most important factors for the safety of navigation is to ensure proper collision avoidance manoeuvres in a congested traffic area. There are many aids for this purpose; for example, an ARPA, which is mandatory for certain ships and which is expected to be effective.

The rates of collision and stranding at sea are very high. The primary causes of stranding are: not checking a ship's position, inadequate route planning, operational misjudgement and inefficient watchkeeping. These causes are responsible for 90 percent of strandings according to accident statistics. Reduction in stranding risk would be of considerable economic benefit and would also reduce pollution and be welcomed by shipping companies and, of course, by crews.

In this paper, the authors discuss a fully automatic berthing system and actual tests using a small training ship, Shioji Maru. The ship is about 440 gross tonnage and furnished with a controllable pitch propeller, a bow thruster and a stern thruster to which a computer can easily be linked. The system developed is composed of an electro-optical position measuring system and the computer software necessary for manoeuvring the ship.

The electro-optical position measuring system can measure a distance between the ship and a target on a berth within 4 cm accuracy and cover an area out to about 100 m range. The manoeuvring is divided into two stages. The first one is from a start line to a transition point off the final berth. At this point, the ship must be stopped in an alongside attitude to the berth. In the second stage, the ship is pushed by the thrusters in an athwartships direction towards the berth and the final speed at the berth must be limited to within 0.5 ms. The computer software generates an appropriate strategy following an approach line which has been determined in advance.

According to the actual tests under slightly rough sea conditions, the system could manoeuvre the ship along the approach line by a direct path and maintain her final speed within the predetermined limit.

This paper was presented at the Institutes NAV90 Conference but was received too late for inclusion in the Proceedings. Copies of the Proceedings are available on application to the Director.

Increased fuel costs necessitate a careful consideration of consumption when planning voyages trans-ocean. A model is formulated whereby ship response algorithms are matched with forecast environmental conditions expected for the duration of a voyage. A discrete system allows an optimization routine to minimize fuel costs for a trans-atlantic passage, using dynamic programming techniques.

These are simulated by using an on-board boosted micro-computer. The results are discussed and limitations of the system considered.