Communicating a sailor´s experience to a computer controller for ship steering

Along the North-West (NW) coast of Sri Lanka exists one of the busiest shipping routes of the nation. Both commercial boats transporting civilians and fishing boats frequently travel along this coast line. The coastal waters are subject to severe winds and strong turbulence. This paper reports a highly interactive neural network controller which convincingly handles turbulent conditions. The simulation results presented in this paper focus on the sailor to computer controller communication during fair weather ship steering and computer controller to sailor communication for heavy weather ship steering. From the visual presentation of the computer decisions, the sailor is able to learn from the computer controller. The real time visualisation routine presented here will give the sailor some direct feeling as to how the neural controller handles turbulence