Cons.A.R. - Italian Shipowner's Research Consortium

Project title
ARIADNA

Duration
36 months (3 years)

The objective of the project ARIADNA is to design from a new concept and build a new series of navigation support systems to allow optimisation of the maritime infrastructures, the navigation on dense traffic in ports and access areas, rivers, channels, lock access areas, and traffic separation areas as well leading to efficient (in terms of capability and economic terms) and environmentally-friendly operations.
ARIADNA based products can be also useful avoid human error in navigation, provide warning and manoeuvring support for collision avoidance, and provide risk and warning assessment to vessel and navigation control systems in channels, port access areas, narrow inland waterways and congested areas.
Ship information is already transmitted by AIS, VTS and communication systems depending on the ship or vessel size, and equipment. ARIADNA provides an step forward, integrating existing information and communication systems and providing a tool in order to assess the navigation risks allowing that traffic separation and manoeuvring could be based on the risk assessment where risk assessment includes the vessels operational characteristics and the effects of wind, currents, shallow waters and wake effects adding and communicating the critical information to the ships in situation to front crossing, overtake or manoeuvring. The manoeuvring constraints by vessel are considered and each vessel transmits the information on his manoeuvring capabilities such that the other ships in the area can manoeuvre with precise knowledge of the position of the other ships in time. The experience from such operations will encourage ship designers to optimize the manoeuvring capabilities at early design stage.
ARIADNA is based on the implementation of the Volumetric Navigation System (VNS) concept. VNS is of great interest in new traffic navigation solutions, in which vessel 3D volume dimensions are used to define the position of an associated volumetric envelope in time. This volumetric envelop will change depending on vessel navigation parameters. According to VNS, all the vessels share this information in order to define collaborative traffic scenarios for an efficient and surface navigation. Time, which is the fourth dimension, is widely used in aerial navigation giving the possible flight position on a certain time, improving traffic management and optimizing aerial space occupation.

As in VNS, in ARIADNA the volumetric envelope of the ship will consider its physical dimensions and its navigation parameters. But ARIADNA will also consider the surrounding and environmental conditions. Considering this, the volumetric envelop will be composed by two terms:

- Horizontal Dimension: horizontal dimensions of this ship's envelope will consider its current speed and also from its extreme stopping and manoeuvring capabilities from the given speed and load, and correction for the drift due to local measured wind and mapped or measured currents.

- Vertical Dimension: The vertical dimension in navigation at sea is the water distance below the keel at fore and the aft of the ship and the sea bottom as given by bathymetry and tide. The display may overlap the Electronic Chart Display and Information System (ECDIS) screen.

At this stage of the project, Cons.a.r. is working at the design of specific modules that will be part of the navigation volumetric system proposed by Ariadna project. In particular, Cons.a.r. entrusted with the "environmental" modules for both platforms (LCS and UT) and the "infrastructure" module for the LCS platform.
Once modules designed by all partners in the project will be approved, we will proceed with the implementation of the modules that represents a significant step towards the finalization of the system.

Last April 11th-12th, in Istanbul, @ ITU Conference room, the Mid-Term meeting for ARIADNA project was held. The meeting gave the possibility to review the work done, to plan the following actions (to be undertaken in the second half of the project) and to get updated on the administrative procedures to be done in relation to the first half of the project.

Ingenieria de Sistemas para la Defensa de España (E),
Instituto Nacional de Tecnica Aerospacial (E),
Teleconsult Austria GmbH (AUT),
Cons.A.R. - Consorzio Armatori per la Ricerca s.r.l. (I),
Istanbul Technicial University (TUR),
True Heading AB (SWE),
HSVA (D),
Grupo Mecanica del Vuelo Sistemas S.A. (E),
Consultores Investigacion Tecnologica S.L. (E),
Puerto de Barcelona (E).