At the end of a conference held in London in June 1957 to discuss the avoidance of collision at sea and in the air, it was recommended that the three sponsoring bodies (the British and French Institutes of Navigation and the Ausschuss für Funkortung) should set up a representative Working Group to study the desirability of amending the Collision Regulations to take into account the use of radar.

The Group, which was formed in January 1958, was composed of the following members, not all of whom were able to attend every meeting: Commander P. C. H. Clissold (School of Navigation, University of Southampton), Captain W. H. Coombs (Honourable Company of Master Mariners, Barrister at Law), Captain R. Dublineau (Compagnie Générale Transatlantique), Captain P. Dupuy (Compagnie des Chargeurs Réunis), Captain H. Giessler (Ausschuss für Funkortung), Captain H. D. Harries (Regierungedirektor beim Bundesminister für Verkehr), Vice-Admiral K. Hoffman (Bundesverkehrsministerium), Professor P. Hugon (Professor Général d'Hydrographic, Rear Admiral, Ret.), Captain E. H. Ketels (Verband Deutscher Radar), Captain Le Bihan (Compagnie des Messageries Maritimes), Captain G. Lohmnitz (Norddeutscher Lloyd, Bremen), Captain P. Marchand (Ocean Weather Ship Service), Dr. F. W. Marienfeld (Bundesverkehrsministerium), Captain D. G. Tait (Honourable Company of Master Mariners), President Dr. R. Vogler (Bundesoberseeamt, Hamburg), Captain F. J. Wylie, R.N. (Director, Radio Advisory Service), Captain C. J. Wynne-Edwards, R.N. (Director, Compass Department, Admiralty Compass Observatory). The members of the Group served only in a personal capacity.

In this paper, which was presented at an Institute meeting, held in Britannic House in London on 1 December 1970, the Chief Marine Superintendent of the BP Tanker Company examines the problems of operating large merchant vessels in the Arctic and describes the experience gained from the two voyages of S.S. Manhattan through the North-West Passage. The chair was taken by the President, Rear Admiral G. S. Ritchie, C.B., D.S.C, Hydrographer of the Navy.

The weather is rarely out of the news. Weather can be hazardous at times almost anywhere on Earth, and the media are always keen to report dramatic events. On the global scene, weather, climate and the environment are issues of great international public concern at present because of the likely implications of increases of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. The contributions of the meteorologist to the understanding of this global problem are increasingly recognized, as is the progress which has been made in the accuracy of day-to-day forecasts. This paper provides a brief résumé of our present ability to model and forecast the behaviour of the global atmosphere and the ocean surface, and also demonstrates how these models are applied to the practical problems of operational ship-routeing by the UK Meteorological Office. It is worth remembering that it was the very high incidence of losses at sea in the 1850s which brought about the establishment of the UK's first meteorological service.

Whilst unmanned aircraft (UMA) can be said to encompass missiles, targets for weapon training, preprogrammed reconnaissance drones and civilian systems such as radio-controlled models used to carry cameras, for the purpose of this paper we will restrict ourselves to aircraft which are capable of sustaining autonomous flight and accepting navigation commands whilst airborne. The terms applied to unmanned aircraft are variously UMA, remotely piloted vehicle (RPV), Drone and Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV).

In this paper, presented by the International Air Navigators Council, and written by its Executive Vice Chairman, the navigation of the S.S.T. is considered from the practising navigator's point of view. Extrapolating from present procedures the conclusion is drawn that navigation system verification should continue to be the responsibility of flight-deck management, that self-contained D.R. systems should be monitored by an externally referenced aid, that raw navigational data should continue to be available to the flight crew and finally that simplicity and reliability in navigation systems should be preferred to finite accuracy.

Consideration of an environment in which operational data and experience are limited to the military is a difficult assignment at the best of times. In order to discuss, with some degree of intelligence, the long-range navigation system considered desirable in the supersonic environment, we have relied mainly on the process of extrapolation using existing data and operational ‘know how’ to formulate practical guidelines.

For some years the principal maritime nations have provided sea-going and future Masters and mates with some form of radar simulator training. These training courses, although differing in duration, subject material, training method and technique, had one common aim: to familiarize responsible sea-going personnel with radar as an instrument. They taught understanding of the various instrument controls, picture or display interpretation, plotting and anti-collision tactics based on the existing international Rules of the Road and Admiralty Court jurisprudence: and all this for open-sea conditions where the Master is sole master of the situation and with no outside adviser at his disposal. Many Masters and mates have followed these very necessary and useful training courses and many more will undoubtedly follow, for nobody should today go to sea in a responsible position as Master or officer of the watch without such training. Recently, pilot authorities have started to send their pilots to the same courses and again this is a step in the right direction.

A recent survey by Burger and Corbet (Welsh Institute of Technology) has furthermore shown that those trained do not seem to obtain full advantage of the acquired knowledge, once they are back in actual practice. This fact plus the fast technical advances in electronics and consequently new radar techniques should eventually lead to the institution of refresher courses.

This article treats integration of navigation data from a variety of sensors in a submarine using extended Kalman filtering in order to improve the accuracy of position, velocity and heading estimates. The problem has been restricted to planar motion. The measurement system consists of an inertial navigation system, a gyro compass, a passive log, an active log and a satellite navigation system. These subsystems are briefly described and models for the measurement errors are given.

Four different extended Kalman filters have been tested by computer simulations. The simulations distinctly show that the passive subsystems alone are insufficient to improve the estimate of the position obtained from the inertial navigation system. A log measuring the velocity relative to the ground or a position determining system are needed. The improvement depends on the accuracy of the measuring instruments, the extent of time the instrument can be used and which filter is being used. The most complex filter, which contains fourteen states, eight to describe the motion of the submarine and six to describe the measurement system, including a model of the inertial navigation system, works very well.

In the title to this paper I have deliberately used the plural, for I do not think it possible that the compass was only invented in one country and knowledge of it transmitted from there to other parts of the world. It is much more likely that the possibilities of its use, not necessarily for purposes of marine navigation, were discovered in several parts of the world, that some who knew of it transmitted it to their neighbours, but that in some areas the original knowledge was lost again. Of course such inventions may have had forms very different from the compass as finally used.

The first definite European account of the compass is contained in the writings of Alexander Neckam (1157–1217), about A.D. 1187. In De Utensilibus he wrote: ‘Qui ergo munitam vult habere navem…habeat etiam acum jaculo suppositam; rotabitur enim et circumvolvetur acus, donec cuspis acus respiciat orientem sicque comprehendunt quo tendere debeant nautae cum cynosura latet in aeris turbatione.’ The translation of this which I accept is as follows: ‘Therefore he who wants to have a well-equipped ship…let him also have a needle placed under a dart; for the needle will rotate until the point of the needle looks towards the East, and thus sailors perceive in which direction they ought to go, when the Little Bear is hidden in disturbed weather’. It has been suggested that in this passage ‘donec cuspis jaculi respeciat’ was probably intended for ‘donee cuspis acus respiciat’.

Following the Amoco Cadiz disaster in 1978 proposals were put forward, and ultimately accepted by IMCO, for a revision of the traffic separation schemes off Ushant and the Casquets, the broad effect of which was to keep large tankers (and those carrying hazardous cargoes) further off the French coast. The modifications came in for some criticism and recent Anglo-French proposals have now secured IMCO agreement. Prior to that a purely United Kingdom working group sought to formulate a comprehensive and continuous routing scheme for the whole English Channel.

Captain Cockcroft who, as an observer for IAIN at IMCO and as RIN representative on the UK working group on Channel Routing, has played a leading part in these discussions, here describes some of the problems and considers issues raised by concepts such as ‘areas to be avoided’, and finally, within the context of traffic separation in straits, proposes alterations to the Collision Regulations which govern the crossing of traffic lanes and the use of inshore traffic zones.

The problem of underkeel clearance is not new; since time immemorial navigators have been concerned to know the minimum depth of water in which they can sail with a ship of given draught. Until quite recently, underkeel clearance requirements were determined almost entirely empirically, and in many cases the rule of thumb values used can be shown to be greater than the requirement of navigational safety would dictate.

In the years since the war the pattern of the oil industry has changed and very large ships are now commonly used to carry crude oil cargoes to a large number of ports around the world. It is obvious that use of these ships, with their deep draughts, has meant that a number of expensive dredging projects have been put in hand to provide adequate access to the ports served. Continuing escalation in size means this will probably continue.

Det Norske Veritas is a Norwegian ship classification society with a large classified fleet registered in 94 countries. The paper printed below was presented by Mr Cuming at an Ordinary Meeting of the Institute held in London on 18 May 1983 with Dr J. F. Kemp in the Chair.

Risk analysis is a method of evaluating potential risks which has been used for the past ten years by Det Norske Veritas, in both the shipping and the offshore fields of operations. The method is based on the systematic identification of hazards, the estimation of probability of occurrence and the evaluation of consequences.

In planning a flight over polar regions, celestial navigation is of paramount importance: Loran and Consol coverage is doubtful and Gee chains non-existent; interpretation of the P.P.I. screen is hampered by lack of accurate survey and the camouflaging of coastlines by ice packs. Thus navigational accuracy and the amount of activity needed to maintain it depend largely on the foresight with which the flight is planned to render celestial information available.

As Mr. Sadler points out, there can be no conflict between mathematicians and navigators, provided the mathematicians have adequately fulfilled their job. If, however, the navigators fail to follow the mathematics, or even to check the results by taking a few examples, then there will be plenty of misunderstandings; to bring ‘philosophy’ into the discussion is to return to the attitudes of the Middle Ages, and to obscure technical issues which are perfectly clear and simple.

In a recent paper I endeavoured to give a statistical solution of the problem of the separation of aircraft tracks with safety. In it I assumed that the distribution of errors of navigation made by the aircraft was a normal gaussian one; but I added a proviso that the effects of blunders might modify the result. From enquiries of various navigators as to the frequency with which they considered they were likely to make blunders I gathered that with a good navigator an undetected blunder might occur on 1 per cent of occasions and further it seemed reasonable to assume that a blunder might be defined as an error greater than three times the standard error of normal navigation. These assumptions are of course quite arbitrary but they seemed to be suitable to give examples of the effect on track separation; this was done in an unpublished paper. In these examples it was supposed that aircraft flying in the same direction were using two parallel tracks distant L apart and on each track aircraft were flying at fixed intervals but quite independently of the aircraft on the other track.

The helicopter traffic over the North Sea is performed in uncontrolled airspace over international waters. The lack of radar coverage makes the establishment of controlled airspace difficult. The development of Automatic Dependent Surveillance (ADS) and use of satellite technology for Navigation, Communication and Surveillance (NCS) have made it possible to evaluate Modified Automatic Dependent Surveillance (M-ADS) as a basis for establishing controlled airspace over remote areas without radar coverage.

The idea of incorporating radar systems into vehicles to improve road traffic safety dates back to the 1970s. Such systems are now reaching the market as recent advances in technology have allowed the signal processing requirements and the high angular resolution requirements from physically small antennas to be realised. Automotive radar systems have the potential for a number of different applications including adaptive cruise control (ACC) and anti-collision devices. This paper summarises recent developments in test methods that have been made to satisfy the compliance requirements for emissions and immunity.

Global Positioning Systems (GPS) are now in use in many applications, ranging from GIS to route guidance, automatic vehicle location (AVL), air, land, and marine navigation, and many other transportation and geographical based applications. In many applications, the GPS receiver is connected to some form of intelligent electronic system which receives the positional data from the GPS unit and then performs the required operation. When developing and testing GPS-based systems, one of the problems is that it is usually necessary to create GPS-compatible geographical data to simulate a GPS operation in real time. This paper provides the details of a Personal Computer (PC)-based GPS simulator system called GPSIM. The system receives user way-points and routes from Windows-based screen forms and then simulates a GPS operation in real time by generating most of the commonly used GPS sentences. The user-specified waypoints are divided into a number of small segments, each segment specifying a small distance in the direction of the original waypoint. The GPS sentence corresponding to the geographical coordinates of each segment is then sent out of the PC serial port. The system described is an invaluable testing tool for GPS-based system developers and also for people training to learn to use GPS-based products.