Ship Route Planning Using Prioritized Navigable Areas
Find Innovative SolutionsGenerate Solutions
Solution Overview
Problem
Conventional ship navigation devices fail to create routes that consider the ambiguity of human thinking, often resulting in routes that unnecessarily avoid navigable areas near land or pass through undesirable areas like fisheries, even if they are longer.
Innovation Solution
A navigation device that divides navigable areas into first and second navigable areas based on user preferences and conditions, prioritizing routes through the first navigable areas while allowing passage through second navigable areas when necessary, using algorithms like A* to minimize total distance and account for water depth and distance to innavigable areas.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If the navigation device creates a route avoiding all innavigable areas, then the ship can travel safely, but the route may pass through undesirable navigable areas (e.g., fisheries) or take unnecessarily long paths
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments navigable areas into multiple types (first navigable area, second navigable area, third navigable area) based on user preferences and characteristics. This segmentation allows the route creation to differentiate between areas that should be avoided even if navigable, and areas that are acceptable alternatives, thereby resolving the contradiction between safety and route optimality.
2Ease of operation
If the navigation device allows manual route creation, then users can specify precise preferences, but the device cannot handle the ambiguity of human thinking and complex preferences
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces cost parameters associated with different navigable area types to quantify user preferences. By converting qualitative preferences into quantitative cost values, the system can automatically handle complex and ambiguous human thinking patterns without requiring sophisticated preference analysis capabilities, thus resolving the contradiction between ease of operation and device complexity.
3Productivity
If the navigation device uses simple route search algorithms, then processing is fast and simple, but the routes do not consider user preferences and may pass through undesirable areas
Solution Approach 1:
The patent performs preliminary classification of navigable areas into different types before route search. By pre-processing the nautical chart information to tag areas with their characteristics and associated costs, the system enables preference-aware route creation using standard efficient algorithms, thus resolving the contradiction between processing speed and preference consideration.
Data Source
AI summary
A navigation device is provided, which may include an acquiring module and a route creating module. The acquiring module may acquire at least a departing location, a destination location and nautical chart information to be used for creating a traveling route for a ship. When a given navigable area is divided into a first navigable area and a second navigable area based on a given condition, the route creating module may create a route being shorter in total distance and taking priority in passing the first navigable area than the second navigable area, based on the departing location, the destination location, and the nautical chart information.