Journal of the Korean Society of Marine Engineering, Vol. 39, No. 5 pp.

577~585, 2015 ISSN 2234-7925 (Print)

J. Korean Soc. of Marine Engineering (JKOSME) ISSN 2234-8352 (Online)
http://dx.doi.org/10.5916/jkosme.2015.39.5.577 Original Paper

Implementation of an Auto-Steering System for Recreational Marine Crafts

Using Android Platform and NMEA Network

Mohammadamin Beirami1 · Hee Yong Lee2 . Yung-Ho Yu+

(Received May 26, 2015； Revised June 12, 2015；Accepted June 19, 2015)

Abstract: This paper deals with development of an autopilot system for leisure yacht based on NMEA 2000 network and android
platform. The developed system can operate both for manual steering and automatic navigation mode. In automatic steering mode,
after manipulation of commands which are NMEA 0183 sentences by android platform, the developed system translates and sends
the packets through NMEA 2000 network. Then the controller which is connected to NMEA 2000 network receives the commands
and controls the boat’s rudder system automatically. The automatic steering mode is achieved by cooperation of two controllers; one
for controlling the rudder system, and the other for controlling the vessel’s heading. To control the vessel’s rudder and heading angle
two PID controllers are developed with an adjustable dead-band gain. Also, in order to eliminate the steady-state error occurred by
applying dead-band, an integral controller which specifically supervises the system’s behavior inside the dead-band area is developed.
In this paper, at the first stage, simulations are accomplished using computer in order to examine the feasibility of the proposed based
on simulation results. In the next step, the system on a real hydraulic steering model is implemented and at the end the performance
examination by implementing it on a real boat and doing test navigation is executed.
Keywords: Autopilot system for leisure yacht, Rudder control, Ship heading control, PID control with dead-band

1. Introduction on smartphones [3], is being considered as a tool for developers

Auto steering operation refers to controlling the vessel’s to implement their ideas. In our proposed method, the mariner

movement automatically without pilot’s involvement, and is can navigate the leisure vessel using tablet, smartphone, PDA

being accomplished by controlling the rudder angle based on or any other types of embedded systems which have android

the vessel’s heading angle. Referring to the statistics [1], each operating system installed. Also in this paper, besides having

year the demand to possess recreational marine crafts is auto-steering application on the android system, several

dramatically increasing, which has made this industry to be a navigational applications such as ECDIS, AIS and Radar can

stable, profitable and attractive market considered by be installed on the same platform which results in cut back on

governments worldwide. According to this, South Korea, as expenses by not buying separate monitoring systems. In large

world’s second largest merchant ship developer country [2] has vessels, the rudder controller is a continuous system

decided to enter to this market and help Korean small and while in small boats including leisure crafts, it is an on/off

medium-size businesses compete with companies around the controller due to the power saving purpose. The rudder system

globe. In recent years, the dramatic improvements in in a ship is usually based on hydraulic systems. The idea of

technology have had profound impacts on maritime industry auto-steering is that the controller receives the desired heading

which has resulted in development of intelligent systems for angle and forces the hydraulic actuators to perform in a way

vessels. As the use of tablets and smartphones has become rife, which the desired track being fulfilled and keep the vessel on

more companies are interested in introducing their product the course [4][5]. Since the controllers’ performance depends

converged with this new technology. For sure Android on sea environment, the vessel may have different responses

operating system, which is the most popular operating system under different circumstances. In order to prove the stability of
the proposed controllers under such circumstances, an

† Corresponding Author (ORCID: http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8305-268X): Division of Information Technology Engineering, Korea Maritime and
Ocean University, 727, Taejong-ro, Yeongdo-gu, Busan 606-791, Korea, E-mail: [email protected], Tel: 051-410-4345
1 Division of Control Engineering, Graduate School of Korea Maritime and Ocean University, E-mail: [email protected], Tel: 051-410-4923
2 Chief of R&D center, KUMHO Marine Tech. company, Email: [email protected] Tel:051-410-4345
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0), which permits unrestricted
non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Copyright ⓒ The Korean Society of Marine Engineering

 Implementation of an Auto-Steering System for Recreational Marine Crafts Using Android Platform and NMEA 2000 Network

accomplishment of simulations and tests of the whole system in The sentences used in this study are as follows:
computer is of great importance. In the paper at first, the whole HTC: Heading Track Control (HTC) is the order to the
idea is implemented and tested in Simulink/Matlab software. In heading controller unit to set values, and control the heading of
the second stage a similar hydraulic rudder system is designed, the vessel.
connected to a NMEA 2000 network with a heading sensor and HTD: Heading Track Control Data (HTD) is the response from
examined by the proposed method on it. Third, the designed heading controller unit containing information about values,
system is installed on a leisure boat and the effectiveness of our modes and current status of the system.
proposed method is proved. At last, the results of onboard test THS: True Heading and Status (THS) provides information
is discussed. about actual vessel heading in degrees.
ROR: Rudder Order Status (ROR) is the order to the rudder
2. NMEA Network controller to control the rudder system of the vessel.
NMEA 2000 is a plug and play means of communication RSA: Rudder Sensor Angle Sentence (RSA) indicates the
between the electrical instruments in a vessel. Today, almost all rudder angle, measured by rudder angle sensor.
the pleasure vessels worldwide are using this network as a way
to connect vessels’ instruments together. In this study, we have 2.2 NMEA 2000
used both NMEA 0183 and NMEA 2000 network. As shown in
Figure 1, the Android platform sends and receives the data in Table 1: Used PGN numbers in this study

NMEA 0183 format and NMEA 2000 stack board translates PGN PGN Categor
Detail
Name Number y
them into NMEA 2000 format.
Rudder order command in
Rudder 127245 Steering direction or angle with
current rudder angle reading
Sends commands to, and
receives data from,
Heading heading control systems.
/Track 127237 Steering Allows for navigational
Control (remote) control of a
heading control system
and direct rudder control.
Heading sensor value with a
Figure 1: Data exchange between Android and NMEA network flag for True or Magnetic. If
the sensor value is Magnetic,
the deviation field can be
2.1 NMEA 0183 Vessel
127250 Steering used to produce a Magnetic
Heading
NMEA 0183 is a combined electrical and data specification, heading, and the variation
which through specific sentence formats makes it possible for field can be used to correct
the Magnetic heading to
marine electronic instruments to exchange data between each
produce a True heading.
other [7]. In NMEA 0183, only printable ASCII characters are
allowed and all settings and orders should be expressed by this
NMEA 2000 is a Plug and Play Communication which is
format. Figure 2 shows an example of a NMEA 0183 sentence.
being used to connect electronic instruments (Sensors, Displays,
It should be noted that the length of sentences varies based on
etc.) to each other within vessels. The NMEA 2000 packets are
different types of packets.
being transmitted through Controller Area Network (CAN Bus).
The NMEA 2000 messages are followed by a header file,
which specify the device which data should be transmitted to,
the priority field and PGN number. The PGN number indicates
the characteristics of the destination device and the protocol in
which the transmitted data should be interpreted. Table 1 is the
Figure 2: NMEA 0183 sentence example for GPS sentence list and description of the PGN numbers used in this study.

Journal of the Korean Society of Marine Engineering, Vol. 39, No.5, 2015. 6 578
 Mohammadamin Beirami · Hee Yong Lee . Yung-Ho Yu

3. Overall schema of the system 8. Rudder angle sensor is connected to the rudder controller

Figure 3 illustrates the idea of whole auto-steering system. and rudder angle is converted by ADC and being reported

The orders will be collected from Android platform in NMEA to NMEA 2000 Network with PGN 127245.

0183 format and will be translated to NMEA 2000 PGN 9. NMEA 2000 Stack board receives the rudder angle sensor

numbers by NMEA 2000 Stack board. reports from NMEA 2000 network, and interprets them to
NMEA 0183 RSA Sentences.
10. In manual mode, the orders should be sent directly to the
rudder controller by android platform. In that case heading
controller is bypassed. Therefore, the android platform
sends ROR sentences to the NMEA 2000 stack board and
that unit translates them to PGN 127245 for NMEA 2000
network.
11. The rudder controller receives PGN 127245 commands
and urges the hydraulic unit to fulfill the orders.

4. Rudder System in Small Boat

Basically, Rudder is a vertical blade located at the vessel’s stern
and is the main part responsible to control yaw movement (Heading
angle) of that vessel [6]. Nowadays the movement of this part is
accomplished by a hydraulic actuator connected to the rudder.
For this reason, as mentioned earlier, in order to test the
Figure 3: Auto-steering system configuration
effectiveness of our method, besides computer simulation we
The characteristics of each instruments and steps which developed a hydraulic steering model as it is being shown in Figure 4.
should be taken in order to perform an auto-steering scenario
has briefed as follows:
1. Heading Track control commands (HTC) are being
produced by Android device in NMEA 0183 sentence
format and sent to NMEA 2000 Stack board by serial
communication.
2. NMEA 2000 Stack board translates the NMEA 0183
Command to appropriate PGN number and sends the PGN
packet through NMEA 2000 network.
3. The heading commands are being delivered to the heading
controller unit by NMEA 2000 Network with PGN 127237.
4. The heading controller receives information from heading sensor
unit with PGN 127250 and makes rudder angle commands. Figure 4: Designed vessel hydraulic steering model
5. The NMEA 2000 stack board also receives PGN 127250
and interprets them to THS sentences for android system. Most of the hydraulic cylinders used for vessel steering
6. The rudder controller receives rudder commands from heading system are double-acting cylinders. In hydraulic system when
controller and urges the hydraulic unit to fulfill the orders. orders come to the unit, the pump streams the oil from reservoir
7. NMEA 2000 Stack board receives reported data from to the control valve section. Based on the directional orders
heading controller and interprets them to NMEA 0183 from rudder controller to the hydraulic controller unit and
HTD data to be sent to android platform through serial because in small boat the hydraulic unit is an on/off system, the
communication. right or left side solenoid unit will be energized, and spool

Journal of the Korean Society of Marine Engineering, Vol. 39, No. 5, 2015. 6 579
 Implementation of an Auto-Steering System for Recreational Marine Crafts Using Android Platform and NMEA 2000 Network

inside control valve directs the oil flow to the cylinder. Qiu, et
al. [11] described a hydraulic system from mathematical point
of view. In that paper it has been stated that the whole steering
system can be represented as a third order transfer function for
velocity control:

(1)

and a fourth order transfer function for position control

(2) Figure 5: Vessel’s degree of freedom

where is the rudder angular velocity, is the rudder angle, As Tzeng et al. described the Nomoto model [4], in vessel’s
U is input signal, T is time constant for the steering linkage maneuvering problem, only the horizontal motion is considered,
subsystem, is damping ratio for the valve subsystem, is which results in considering only surge, sway and heave
natural frequency for the valve subsystem and K is overall gain. movements. Therefore we have
The aforementioned equations for further simplification can be
(6)
written as a first-order equation for velocity control and a
second-order system for position control as follows: (7)

(8)
(3)

Where X,Y and N are surge, sway and yaw motions, m is the
(4) mass of the ship, Iz is the moment of inertia to the Z axis, u, v
1
and r are the surge, sway and yaw speed, and , , are surge,

As said before, in small pleasure boat, hydraulic system is sway and yaw acceleration. In considering only the steering

on/off by rudder controller, so when the system is off and turns motion, surge motion is separated from steering motion and

on again, there is a delay time to start set up and pumping again especially, by neglecting the sway motion in Equation (7)

which means each time there will be a delay time which should and (8) and by taking the Laplace Transform of yaw and surge

be considered. In this case the Equation (3) can be rewritten by: with considering a constant speed, a second order system is
modeled as

(5)
(9)

where is the time delay for the rudder system.

After further simplifying the equation, a 1st order system is
5. Vessel Dynamics obtained with a time delay due to the process time inside the
Basically, a vessel has 6 degrees of freedom (6 DOF), system which should be considered.
including three translational motions (surge, sway and heave)
and the other three rotational motions (roll, pitch and yaw) (10)
[8][9]. Figure 5 shows the 6 degrees of freedom in a vessel
motion. Where is the time delay of vessel’s heading.

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 Mohammadamin Beirami · Hee Yong Lee . Yung-Ho Yu

6. Control Unit its rout and the controllers consider it as no error.

Usually, the heading and rudder controller on vessels are

PID controllers due to their simplicity and reliability [5]. In this
case in our study also we have used PID controllers with dead-
band zone. Using the dead-band is to increase error tolerance of
the controllers which results in overcoming with chattering
phenomena both in rudder actuation system and whole ship in
presence of minor errors.

6.1 PID controller

Proportional-integrative-derivative Controller (PID) is a Figure 7: The ship changes its rout due to steady state error
commonly used feedback controller which is popular because of its
simplicity in design and robustness in performance. In PID control Thus, in order to prevent such problems, a separate

which is sometimes being called a three-term control, three controller must be implemented as a supervisory control to

separate constants are working together to minimize the error control the Vessel’s rudder and heading’s behavior in the dead-

between desired commands and the actual system response. band Zone. Supervisory controller or Ramadge-Wonham

In digital control, algebraically, digital PID control algorithm framework is a method in which the behavior of the system is

can be implemented using equation below: being restricted by a controller. In this work, we implemented a
separate integral controller to do the job. This idea has been
1 1 2 1 shown in Figure 8.
1 (11)
2

where is the proportional gain, is the reset time , is

the rate time and is sampling time.

6.2 Controlling inside dead-band Zone

The dead-band or dead-zone is a block which generates zero
output within a specific area.

Figure 8: PID controller with supervisory controller in DB

6.3 Controlling in Manual Steering Mode

In this mode the vessel’s control is performed by mariner’s
involvement. In another word, the rudder angle command is
ordered by the mariner and rudder control unit operates to
Figure 6: Dead-band zone
fulfill the tasks. From control aspects of view, the idea could be
As mentioned previously, the aim of using dead-band is to illustrated as Figure 9.
decrease the sensitivity of the controllers and avoid chattering
phenomena which may occur due to the minor errors between
desired orders to the controller and the system’s response. Thus
by using dead-band block, the controller will consider a
specified range as no error and it will take no action. In spite of
advantages which can be achieved by applying the dead-band Figure 9: Block diagram of manual steering mode
block, steady state error is the main disadvantage. In auto-
steering mode, and in long term travel by vessel, due to the 6.4 Controlling in Automatic Steering Mode.
steady state error inside the controller, the vessel may change In this mode, the heading controller and rudder controller

Journal of the Korean Society of Marine Engineering, Vol. 39, No. 5, 2015. 6 581
 Implementation of an Auto-Steering System for Recreational Marine Crafts Using Android Platform and NMEA 2000 Network

cooperate together to fulfill the heading orders. The heading As mentioned earlier in order to design a suitable controller
degree commands are specified by the mariner. The heading for our work, we have simulated mathematical model of our
controller unit receives the heading commands and based on system which we described previously, in Matlab/Simulink
the current heading angle, manipulates rudder angle commands software. In this chapter we will discuss about the system’s
automatically to decrease the error between desired heading response under different circumstances.
angle and current heading angle. Heading sensor and rudder Figure 11 shows the computer simulation block diagram for
degree sensor also send their information to the controllers to rudder control in manual steering mode. Figure 12, illustrates
indicate the current rudder and heading position. This idea has the responses of the rudder in manual mode, where only the
been represented in Figure 10. rudder actuator is being controlled.
As seen in Figure 12, the gray boundary indicates the dead-
band zone, where the error must be disregarded. Therefore, the
system response in presence of dead-band block and without
supervisory controller inside dead-band is experiencing a huge
steady-state error. On the other hand, if we apply an integral
controller as a supervisory controller inside dead-band, the
system response would be same as the stretch line in Figure 12.
Figure 13 depicts the computer simulation in automatic
steering mode, or heading control where the integral
Figure 10: Block diagram of automatic steering mode
supervisory controller is added inside dead-band. In automatic-
steering mode, the rudder system’s response is shown in
7. Computer Simulation and Experiment
Figure 14. Figure 15 also shows the heading behavior under
7.1 Computer Simulation
different conditions. Figure 15 shows that the heading
behavior in presence of dead-band zone with integral
supervisory controller is similar to its behavior in absence of
the dead-band zone, however in absence of dead-band zone, in
order to have this performance, the rudder fluctuates severely
as shown by red line in Figure 14. When there is no dead-band
in heading controller, if there is even a little error, the

Figure 11: Computer simulation for manual steering mode controller tries to overcome with that error , however most of
the time the system response will not be error-free. In this case,
chattering occurs to make heading to be error-free. To solve
this problem, the dead-band was added which the blue line in
Figure 14 is the rudder response after applying dead-band
block. As it could be seen, steady-state error is still a big
problem which could be solved by an integral supervisory
controller. The green line in Figure 14 is the response of the
Figure 12: Rudder response in manual mode rudder when an integral controller is applied inside the dead-

Figure 13: Computer simulation for Automatic steering mode

Journal of the Korean Society of Marine Engineering, Vol. 39, No.5, 2015. 6 582
 Mohammadamin Beirami · Hee Yong Lee . Yung-Ho Yu

band. This response results the heading behavior as shown by

green line in Figure 15.

Figure 14: Rudder response in automatic-steering mode Figure 16: Rudder model connected to NMEA 2000

Figure 15: Heading behavior in automatic-steering mode

From system responses, it could be concluded that the Figure 17: Controller on an embedded system
satisfactory method would be having a dead-band block for
both heading and rudder controller with an integral supervisory
controller inside the dead-band zone.

7.2 Experiment
As described before, in this study we also developed a
hydraulic rudder actuation system to take a HIL (Hardware
Figure 18: NMEA 2000 stack board
in Loop) test the whole system and check the possible
problems before installing it on a real boat. The designed
rudder model was previously shown in Figure 4. We
designed a real NMEA 2000 network and connected our
model to that as shown in Figure 16.We also implemented
our control algorithm on an embedded system (Figure 17)
and designed NMEA 2000 Stack board (Figure 18) to
translate NMEA 0183 to NMEA 2000 and Vice versa. Also
for manipulating rudder commands or heading commands,
we designed software (Figure 19) on computer, which
simulates the responsibilities of an android platform. After
operation and witnessing the data flow in the system, we
implemented our system on a real pleasure boat. Figure 19: Android software simulator

Journal of the Korean Society of Marine Engineering, Vol. 39, No. 5, 2015. 6 583
 Implementation of an Auto-Steering System for Recreational Marine Crafts Using Android Platform and NMEA 2000 Network

We examined the effectiveness of the proposed method on a

real pleasure boat in Busan Haeundae Marina area in Korea.
The testing was performed in a calm sea state condition. A set
of data was measured, displayed and stored both by Android
and ECDIS systems for further performance inspections.
Figure 20 illustrates the boat and installed instruments
which used in the test navigation day.
Figure 21 shows the rout traveled by the pleasure boat by
control of auto steering system. The yellow bold line is the Figure 22: Android platform
planned rout by ECDIS and the inner red line is the tracked
rout. 8. Conclusion
In Figure 22, the heading command and tracked heading has In order to connect the android platform to the network, we
been shown where the performance of the system shows a proposed and developed that the android system generate
satisfactory response. NMEA 0183 sentences and by a translator (NMEA 2000 Stack
board) to exchange data between Android platform and NMEA
2000 network. In order to bring the idea to the reality and
examine the real performance of the system, before installing it
on a real vessel, we developed a model of our work on a
hydraulic steering system model and also to test the
effectiveness of the proposed controller, we did computer
simulation. The proposed controllers were two PID controllers,
which one of them is controlling the rudder position and
another is controlling the heading angle of that vessel. After
computer simulation of the controller, we concluded that in an
environment such as water ways, in order to eliminate the
fluctuations in rudder system, the error tolerance of the
Figure 20: Testing day boat, instruments and condition controllers must be increased. To do so, we decided to

Figure 21: Traveled rout by the vessel

Journal of the Korean Society of Marine Engineering, Vol. 39, No.5, 2015. 6 584
 Mohammadamin Beirami · Hee Yong Lee . Yung-Ho Yu

implement a dead-band block inside the controllers. Conference on Systems, Man and Cybernetics, vol. 1, pp.
Nevertheless, the PID controller with dead-band block was not 669-674, 2006.
a complete solution, as it had a huge steady state error inside. [5] R. Fraga and L. Sheng, “Non-linear and intelligent
Thus, the final decision for the controller was 2 PID controllers, controllers for the ship rudder control,” Proceedings of the
each with a dead-band zone and supervisory integral controllers IEEE Electronics, Communications and Photonics
which control the system’s behavior inside the dead-band and Conference, pp. 1-5, 2011.
reject errors as much as possible. Due to the power saving [6] D. Gerr, Boat Mechanical Systems Handbook: How to
issues, it was decided that the rudder controller to be an on/off Design, Install, and Recognize Proper Systems in Boats,
controller. After successful results in computer simulation, we McGraw Hill companies, 2009.
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Acknowledgement Engineering, vol. 39, no. 1, pp. 32-44, 2015.
This paper is written based on the project titled [10] H. Qiu, Q. Zhang, J. F. Reid, and D. Wu, Modeling and
“development of an intelligent autopilot system based on Simulation of an Electrohudraulic Steering System, Paper
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foundation and Korea Marine Equipment Research Institute
(KOMERI).

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