ADVANCEDPRODUCTDESIGNDocumentationThe Future of Ship’s propulsion control units

2011

Varut Rintanalert

Project tutorRaimo Nikkanen

Propulsion control has been achieved through various different means throughout history. Muscle power employed in driving oars and hoisting sails were superseded by engine telegraphs and steering wheels which in turn gave way to levers, joysticks and electronic interfaces.

The questions now are: How will the propulsion control be achieved in the near future? How will the control equipment be designed?

We have begun our investigation by doing research about ship technologies and other related subjects. It is seemed that ship’ designs and their engines have been heavily developed in the past 20 years. Most of these development are from the advance in the field of faster computing which leads to better auto-pilot system, improvement in energy conversion, improvement in ship’ propulsion systems and the improvement in technology in general.

1st week This was about making object with wheel. I was having visa

problem and still in Thailand.2nd weekFrom what we have researched, we have found a strong connection

between the controllers and the way the azimuth and the tunnel thruster works. These controllers are very straight forward in a sense that they are only mimicking the operation of the azimuth and the tunnel thruster. However, a more elegant and simplify interfaces such as a joystick or an interactive map planner can also be found as well. Before we are going into further details, one need to understand that it is very important to have both kinds of controllers. The

simplify version, such as a joystick, that combines the use of all azimuth and tunnel thrusters together and the individual controlled’s equipment, such as the azimuth controller, the helm and the thruster controller, that only operate on specific engine. The reasons of this division are very obscure, Wartsila’s designer has stated that it is down to the traditional way of controlling the ship that the captain feels much better to control them individually until the fact that everything needs to be double for security reason in case of error or equipment’s breakdown.

Throughout the research phrase (week 2), it is clear that the majority of the individual controlled’ products on the market have very identical way to operated. To increase the RPM, one can push the lever forward to increase the RPM. It is also possible to reverse the RPM by pulling the lever backward.

We have also looked at other sources of inspiration especially in the chemical side. Things like Ferro fluid and corn starch have generated some interesting points. However, we were discussing that it could be hard to implement these inspiration literally since this can get very messy.

In this week, I have spent a lot of time looking at a lot of research papers, such as the Autopilot system, ship and bridge design, layout of the ship, different kind of captains and also the trend in marine control system. The most important information here is the about the type of captain or navigator that you might have on the bridge. We can categorized them into 4 categories

1. WThe technical Administrator or the automation type. The people in this group is relying on the face that everything could be

RESEARCH + RECREATE

“The questions now are: How will the propulsion control be achieved in the near future? How will the control equipment be designed?”

automated so that they just make sure that everything is ok then they press ‘the automate’ button and then go to bed

2. Coordinator type. This type of user coordinates technical systems. He supervises their functions and adjusts these in accordance to the situation at hand. His/her focus is mainly about getting the Ship from point A to B

3. Integration agent. This type of user is seen as an active user of technical systems. This user would based his/her decisions and act on the basis of an overall picture which he use the information and all the technical information to help him

4. Bridge manager. The bridge manager is seen as autonomous decision maker who uses the bridge systems at his/her will if he see that the information are rely able and helpful. This also means that at some point he will based all this decision on his/her instinct alone. This is the main differences between this user and the third user since this user ueses the best of both world

After knowing some key user group, we began our quick brainstorming of concepts. Our early concept can be categorized as three main groups. These are

1. The concept of providing better navigational informationThese concept is consisted of Sea bed monitor and Augmented reality window2. The concept of control unit that is use to control individual

engineThis concept is consisted of ‘Cloth Iron’, ‘boat visual propulsion controller’, mixerway 3.The concept of a ‘joystick’ that is use to control multiple engine.Map controller and Waypoint systemWe have sent these ideas to our client at Wartsila. However, we

didn’t receive any real feedback that we could use. It was pretty much saying that they like these and that but didn’t say why or how they would like to see them.

“our early concept can be categorized as three main groups plus which are navigational infomation, Controller for individual engine and joystick for all engines”

Week 3Confused and lost, we were still trying to generate more

ideas that could be interesting so me and Henrik had created some additional concept together. These are the sleigh (which is the developed version of the ‘cloth iron’, turning table that contains set of individual controllers on one side and joy stick on another, azzy slider is the concept where we thought that it would be more interesting to be able to move your azimuth thruster forward and backward, bridge train, snake bridge and suction cup wagon were that ideas that would allow the captain to move his/her bridge around to see their surrounding thus providing more visual information. Again, we have sent these concepts to Wartsila and there were no feedback given for this set of concept.

At this point, I felt that what we are doing is totally wrong. We had neither direction nor target to aim. So, I had come up with a drastic change to our direction. After I had managed to convince my teammates, we have a new clear goal. To design a control system that would be used in the next 50 years. To find the solution to this problem, we have to be able to answer this question: what would happened to the propulsion system in the next 50 years?

So we had begun our investigation by looking at external influences such as economic, population level, weather changes, sea condition, technology and sustainability. We had looked at many research papers and also a lot of report that anticipated these future events. We had discussed that in the future the economy from the east will be booming and lead to more import/export. These changes

will result in an increase in number of cargo ship as well as the capacity of the cargo ship. It is possible that the future cargo ship will be wider as well as carry higher stack of containers. Due to the rapid growth of population, We had anticipated that there will be a ‘land shortage’ event occurring in major cities. We had looked at Singapore, Dubai and japan on its land expansion plan. We have anticipated that there will be a lot of small, individually own ship in the future. For weather change and sea condition, it will be very bad. Technology and sustainable trend will possibly move into a realm of ‘it will be much better through time’ aspect. So what are we suggesting? We believed that we need something that will make your ship flexible enough to sustain all these condition and that came down to one thing. Maneuverability. We believed that this is the future of the ship. It is arguable that there are many other aspects to consider but we strongly believed that our assumption is right since all the signs are point to it.

So what will happen? We had wrote down some ideas of what might happened to the design ship, for example. Henrik anticipated that the azimuth could not just being able to move around but also able to spin in every direction (every single axis) hence if your cargo ship is too heavy, the azimuth thruster could be used to push the ship up or down (in a case of sailing under the bridge). Other Ideas were that we could move the building on the ship around or turn them to over to achieve better maneuverability in a rough sea condition. Another idea is that all the interfaces could become interactive holographic.

WHAT IS THE FUTURE?

“Maneuverability. We believed this is the future of the ship.”

We thought that the idea of having a spherical turning and moveable azimuth thruster is really a great idea. So we have decided to take this idea forward. We believed that by making the azimuth thruster to move more freely will improve a lot of maneuverability. This will allow different thrusters’ layouts to be created for different sea conditions. By using this system, there would be no need for tunnel thrusters since any thruster could be moved and replaced the tunnel thrusters’ responsibility. It also allow better turning and better side to side movement as well as the ability to move up or down depending on the need of the captain.At that time, Me and Henrik were that ones that are responsible for this idea. Lucas, in the other hand, was focusing on improving traditional control unit this due to the fact that he didn’t manage to have a lot of involvement when we were setting up a new goal. Henrik was responsible of polishing our 360 ° Azimuth thruster’s concept and I was responsible to create the controllers and the

interfaces. I have went through all the main aspects that the controller must

be able to control. These can be categorized into 4 aspects which are RPM, Rotation, Ankle and Location. At that point in time I was focusing on the fact that the captain must be able to control all of these aspects under this hand. This lead me to create a set of controllers that can be used with one hand (for each thruster). In the end, I had decided to separated everything together and so created a control interfaces that allow the captain to change every value individually under his hand. This design in available in two version which is the left and the right version.

Week4We had a meeting with Wartsila’s designers on the Viking

express’ ferry. The responds were really good. The designers had point of some good points and also some ‘opportunities’ to make it better. Mainly the comments were about how would you make this

“We believed that by making the azimuth thruster to move more freely (360° in 3 axises) will improve a lot of maneuverability.

system works with different types of captain? How would you develop the controllers so that they can create a better synchronization between the controller and the thruster? One of the things that they recommend us to do is to start to create an early prototype as soon as possible. Apart from that, me and Henrik had discussed other issue of how to make the controller better than the this one. We found out that with the design that I had come up with was very detached and very abstracted. Me and Henrik had spent around 2 – 3 days finding out what could be done to make it better. We had a look through our previous designs and we found one concept that we could push it forward. We had chosen the rollerball controller. The reason that we had to reconsider this controller was that we had to look for the ‘missing synchronization’ that was not present in our current design. It is seem that this rollerball has that missing piece. So, we started to create many prototypes based on the design of this rollerball controller. After a

“We had to look for the ‘missing synchronization’

that was not present in our current design (top)”

lot of prototyping, we had found the best solution. The solution is to have an indication ball that contains the following indicators: Rotational axis, Ankle axis, front, back as well as the direction of force. The holder has to provide a better grip as well as giving indication of the rotational ankle.

Me and Henrik and split up the tasks and I am responsible for creating a holder and henrik will be doing the rollerball. After the final design has been made, we put them into the 3D printer and prototype it out. The prototyped version is very close to the original mock-up. We have managed to meet the requirement that we had stated earlier.

We had creted the final design of the controller unit and we called it the ‘positional controller’. It is consisted of two part which is the sphere and the holder. The sphere contains three function which are the rotation, ankle controller and the thrust indicator. the holder provides two main function which are controlling the location and giving out the status indicator. Yellow indicates that the jobs are in progress, green means its done or ready and red means problem. This indicator light will appear everytime

“The solution is to have an indication ball that contains the following indicators: Rotational axis, Ankle axis, front, back as well as the direction of force.”

“We had created the final design of the controller unit and we called it the ‘Positional Controller’

We had created the rails that the positional controller could be moved on. The first version of the rail’s unit does not resemble the real proportion. This was a big mistake that we discovered later on. We had felt that there has been a strong connection between every control unit to the actual working component. This should also be the main point of the rail’s unit. Later on we had tried to create a better rail’s unit with the right proportion. (this proportion was taken from the offshore supple vessel) This lead to a more precise control of the thruster’s location because its have the right proportion and its also give a very direct connection to the real ship and the platform that the navigator has to work on.

The next things is to create an interface and a platform that will hold everything together. We decided to create a layout of the rail that represent the possible location of the thruster. However, we have come to realize that it is not possible to simplify the actual layout. The reason was due to the proportion that we needed to maintain. We felt that the proportion is very important since inaccurate proportion could lead to an imprecise control.

“This lead to a more precise control of the thruster because its have the right proportion and its also give a very direct connection to the real ship”

Week 5th

In this week, I have finalized the layouts of the interfaces and also create different variation of the controller platform from left wing, rightwing and the center. For example, there are horizontal interfaces at the captain seat but vertical interfaces are at the wing’s table. The wing’s table contains 3 interfaces which are the vertical controller, the square controller and view changer. The vertical controller is the controller that allows the navigator to see the overview information of the ship as well as being able to individually adjust the thruster control. The square interface, in the other hand, shows the detailed information about the three thrusters as well as fews other essential information. It is also

possible to adjust the control of thrusters individually from this screen as well. The view changer allows the navigator to rotate or flip the square screen to suit his viewing position. We feels that there is a need to have both screen. The reasons are that there must be screens that represent detail information about the ship as well as the thruster, also the navigator must be able to control the ship from both physical object and from the interfaces.

The new design for the thruster had been created. We believed that the traditional thruster’ designs do not fit well with our design. The problem was the operation of the traditional thruster had suggested a sense of direction and we are trying to make this neutral. The new design has utilized the upward and downward movement. Although, this design is not perfect as it still suggest a sense of direction but we felt that this design offer the least sense of direction from everything we found.

When push down, the thruster will thrust forward and vice versa. The color for forward thrust is blue and backward thrust is orange. There is an indicator light at the base of the thruster as well as in the rollerball controller to give better indication of where each Triaxial thruster is going.

We spent the rest of the week trying to finalized everything so that in the next week we could start the promotional video.

“The new design has utilized the up-ward and downward movement .... When push down, the thruster will thrust forward and vice versa.”

6th weekI had started working on the instruction video of the system as

well as spenting the rest of the time planning on other material that would make our presentation better.

“I had started working on the instruc-tion video of the system”

Conclusion.I had a very intense period of working in this project. This was

one of the best project design project that I ever had in my universities’ experiences. I had a good team. Although, one of my teammate may not be present all the time but he was a very valuable member to the team. We would have a better result if he was there at the end. I find the project’s target very broad however, this is a good thing. This allowed me to create many possibilities in many different directions. It is good to have an open ended project but having such a low requirement is not a best idea for me. I have found that I have to keep reminding myself to be motivated and go beyond the minimum requirement of “a nice picture or a rendering image”. This came down to the rest of my teammate too. At one point, We were looking for a simple and easy solution that would make us lazy but I couldn’t bear it. I had to make me and my teammate motivated even at the end of the project. In the end, we worked hard but the result is more than satisfying!

It is nice that we had two main visits to the ship and the simulator space. We had gained a lot of insight that is extremely valuable. We, as a class, found that it would have been better if we have this visit at

the beginning of the project and not at the last 3 weeks where we already have almost a final idea. We, as a group, found that we would have created much better system as well as able to use the insight to individually develop each of the components more precisely.

In term of feedback, it would have been better if we could receive more criticism and more critical feedback along the way. We, as a group, felt that we have been left alone at many point. However, in some of the meeting with our supervising professor, Raimo Nikkanen, he had provided us with many good criticisms and we would appreciate to have more of this throughout the project.

In term of realizing the concept, I have to say that we had a very good support from our supervising professor. We were able to realize our final concept by utilizing both CNC machine and also a 3D printer. We had given a lot of opportunity to be able to create a lot of prototypes and we appreciated that.

One last comment about our final presentation, I felt that it would have been even better if we have the rest of the design team with us on that day. We would like to know more about the possibility of our concept and we would like to hear more professional feedback as well.

“I had a very intense period of working in this project. This was one of the best project design project that I ever had in my universities’ experiences ..... it would have been better if we could receive more criticisms and more critical feedbacks along the way.” - Varut Rintanalert, MEDes, 28 Oct 2011