The implementation of a fuzzy logic marine autopilot

In the field of ship control the proportional plus integral plus derivative (PID) controllers remain common place. However, increasingly new autopilot strategies, promising higher levels of robustness and/or adaptive qualities, are being proposed as possible successors to the PID. Fuzzy logic is a modern control technique which is currently finding an increasing and diverse range of novel applications. By means of full scale sea trials, a newly developed Fuzzy logic autopilot is evaluated and a comparison made to its conventional equivalent.