1.The Processing and Background of the foundation
Under the support and leadership of The Ministry of Education, Shanghai Education Commission and Shanghai Maritime University, Engineering Research Center of shipping simulation, Ministry of Education ( referred to as the center below) was approved by the Ministry of Education in September 2009 .The center relays on Shanghai Maritime University to do its run .At the meantime ,with the members of main Laboratory in the fields of shipping technology and Control Engineering transportation ,it constitutes the nationwide shipping simulation technology and its application and development engineering research center.
Figure1. Demonstrate meeting for setting up
The center researches on the major technical problems about the common technology required by national marine simulation and the development of Intelligent water transportation ,and it will gather common and main technology from the important scientific and technological achievements which have a market value ,thus making it engineering and industrialization. Besides,the center will provide policy advice and technical support for the construction of Shanghai international shipping center and shipping and marine management departments .In the fields of marine simulation ,it can also provide the technology researching, achievements transformation, products testing, consulting and assessment services for domestic and foreign shipping enterprises, universities and research institutes.The number of national, provincial ,major and other projects undertaken by the center, which includes both the completed and processing projects, has reached to 400.It makes a creative technical breakthrough at the framework of marine simulation technology development ,standard, key technology, products, integration and evaluation of the systems,forming our own intellectual property rights for a series of technology achievements, a number of leading domestic level achievements and some international advanced level achievements,such as the research and application of sea search and rescue machine vision system ,standards ,operation and safety research in deep water , the navigable testing of a real ship for Shanghai Railway Bridge , the technology of real ship cabin simulation system , the simulation and application research on the new energy ship and so on . More than 10 transformation of achievement and promoted application has been completed, meanwhile ,special vessels and naval architecture and ocean engineering pool project is under construction. These results have sped up the pace of construction of the transportation industry informatization and intelligentization, provided strong technical support to improve safe, orderly, unimpeded, efficient services and sustainable development of China's shipping industry, which has important strategic significance to attach great importance and speed up the development of the shipping simulation technology and related industries.
2. The status of the base, including the personnel composition(the structure of title and the educational level), institutions, the direction of research and so on.
The construction of the “center” always adhere to the service of national and local economic development strategies as the guiding ideology, track industry trends, and actively carry out the construction of maritime technology development and personnel training base. And the “center” not only serve for the construction of the Shanghai international shipping center，transportation, energy conservation strategy, maritime education training equipment (such as VTS Simulator, ECDIS simulator) research and development ， to meet the needs of the STCW Convention of our country, but also do research on Merchant Shipping Beidou satellite navigation technology，promote the popularization and application in our merchant Shipping, develop new types of cabin simulation technology and advocate green energy-saving.
The Center currently employs 100 people, In which there are 60 dedicated staffs: 13 senior titles, 26 deputy senior titles, 17 intermediate titles and 5 junior titles and others. In which: 15 Doctors,32 masters and 13 undergraduates. In order to better, faster to complete the construction of the talent team, Center has taken the following measures:(1) Introducing talents from both at home and abroad to be key point of Centre during the construction of the Center.(2) Own raised youth backbone has become “the center” nucleus.(3) Make full use of social resources, mobile personnels to become indispensable elements of the construction of Center. Provide strong support for the introduction and foster of talents in aspects of policies,initiatives ,funding and so on. Introduce a total of five outstanding talents in the past three years, including four PHD, a senior captain. At the same time, a considerable part of middle-aged teachers grow into leaders of academic or backbone teachers. According to statistics, one person in the group was supported by Shanghai Youth Science and Technology Development Funds. Four people have been selected as the training objects for academic leaders of the Shanghai Maritime University .Six people were chosen as the training objects of backbone of Shanghai Maritime University teachers. Three people were promoted to professor.Four were promoted to associate professor.
The director of the “Center” is the main person in charge of the center, appointed by the Centre Management Committee.In general for 4 years, and may be employed for re-election.”Center”has one director and several deputy directors.During the construction, the director of the Center is Professor Xiao Yingjie, deputy directors are Professor Shi Chaojian and Professor Hu Yihuai.The main research institutions and directions of the center The Navigation simulation technology department: It is responsible for building a integration platform of navigation simulation .Besides, it also does some research, makes development and transforms achievements on navigation simulation technology, intelligent ship information platform integration technology and industrialization of the direction in maritime information processing and intelligent decision technology and so on.
The waterway simulation evaluation technology department: It is responsible for building a monitoring and controlling platform about waterway simulation evaluation. On the other hand, it is also engaged in the research, development and achievements transformation on the technology of Vessel traffic flow monitoring, vessel traffic accident simulation analysis technology, infrared and video monitoring, mooring measurement and so on.
The turbine simulation technology department: It not only takes part in the building of turbine simulator simulation platform but also provides a platform of practice teaching and study exchange for the marine engineering discipline, marine engineering in maritime institutions at home and aboard, and a training base for the practical training of shipping and related enterprise .It aims at promoting academic level ,so as to form a research team which has sustainable development ability to open up new directions about turbine subject.
The construction and management of the pilot-plant base department: it has built up Mulan shipping simulation memorial center , the large ship analog control experimental base of China pilotage association/Shanghai pilot station, the pilot-plant base of navigation and marine engineering practice base outside and ship engine room comprehensive experiment, and takes charge of them. On the other side , it undertakes the pilot work of the products’research and development as well as the engineering proposal of the Navigation simulation technology department, the waterway simulation evaluation technology department and the turbine simulation technology department.The marketing department: The technology promotion and industrialization transformation of products is its mainly job.Central office: It takes charge of the center’s administration, scientific research and daily transaction processing.
Figure 2 The organizational chart of the center
3.The outstanding achievements in scientific research since the establishment of the base
1)Basing on the 863 national projects and national natural science fund and other countries projects ,in the views of the researching and the rescuing for the Maritime is arduous,the searching and rescuing field depending on the present situation of human visual ,avoiding or alleviating our eye-fatigue and its influence for research and rescue is limited,develop the search and research system in the foundation of machine vision,providing a new technical equipment for sea searching,helping people search and rescue the target in the bad environment,improving maritime safety and security level of human life.As the 863 national project in our country,the first navigation field,the major is researching image information collected by a variety of imaging equipment,analyzing the feature of the complex research and rescue background and the hard for detecting weak targets oversea,come up with the detecting target method of the wrecked ship or the crew.Developing the draft ship automatic identification and scale measurement methods based on machine vision,making the operator is able to measuring the ship draft rapidly and accurately through the acquisition of ship draft image,improving the stability and accurately of ship draft measurement ,establishing a theory and method basement for setting an easy-to-go,easy-to-use ship gauge automatic identification system. The purpose of this research results can provide a ship gauge automatic detection methods instead of human eye ship gauge automatic detection methods , also can be applied in ship-freight and inspection-quarantine departments, which has high economic and social benefit and practical value system prototyped by visible light subsystem, infrared subsystem radar subsystem ,remote sensing subsystem and control platform , as is showed in picture3 and picture 4 that the research results can provide analysis method for water search and rescue image so that can assist search and rescue personnel to complete their work and to make life much safer effectively ;furthermore it has been used to completed a part of natural science fund based on the of research results (The key Technology Research Of Mechanism Of Visual Attention About weak target detection On Water , Number of project: 08 zr1409300); which had already approved by the national natural science fund youth project a (based on spectral analysis and machine vision perils of the sea rescue target detection method study, 51109128)
Figure3.frame diagram
Figure4 The Shipwreck Search and Rescue Machine Vision Integration System
The safety facilities,standards and risk controlling key technologies of Bridge crash.
The center take reaches on the anti-collision safety facilities and standards of Jiashao Bridge and the high-grade reaches of channels and bridges in Anhui Province ,focusing on the research of the range and speed of Ship-bridge collision based on the navigation simulation technology,as well as the drift experiment based on the navigation simulation in large flow rate environment;the researches of the traffic capacity, velocity distribution,the type and the ship-scale in the vessel traffic flow,based on the vessel Navigation law of AIS system around the bridge areas;according to the risk identification and the prediction model of Ship-bridge collision,make researches on the kinds of risk of the Ship-bridge collision,as well as the statistics and methods of risk identification,which is shown in Fig.5.
The project has achieved the following results :
1)The two-dimensional Fairway model has been established , and we have simulated the ship sailing route.Then we raise the safest routes for navigation within the effective width , have evaluated the safety of the fairway , and have modified the model through a real boat test .
2)We have calculated the impact angle and force of the ship to the bridge structures based on the simulation model .
3)Through the research of domestic and international data, put forward collision facilities, and serialization bull standard design according with the actual of our country, so can protect the bridge structure and the safety of the ship effectively.
4)With the help of major the detection technology,sensor and signal processing, in the waterway Bridge Group traffic system of major control points,and the intelligent management system of traffic safetyalong the waterway bridge group reaches ( computer desktop ),to propose the active alarm and the warning key technologies along the waterway bridge group reaches.
Figure5. Bridge crash safety facilities, standards and risk control key technologies
3) Accident simulation system: When containers crash into the sea
When containers crash into the sea for large waves’ coming, the accident simulation system will change the roll angel to keep the balance by simulating the container ship in the swing. Once the roll angle is fully changed, it will conduct a force analysis on the container lashing system. And force data will be displayed in the accident reconstruction system, and then be checked by the force. If the strength is beyond to change the color of the corresponding container, it indicates that the containers will crash into the sea. As shown in Figure 6. The picture shows the reproduction process of the container crashing into the sea, thus it can be very easy to find the cause of the accident, and to provide the basis for the division of responsibility of the accident.
Figure 6.Container crashed into the sea accident simulation system
4) Technology research on the infrared and video detection
Through the real-time video monitoring of the inland river higher channel bridge group, to analyze video data, detect, distinguish and track the moving ship of inland waterways, establish the corresponding active early warning model, and can make active early warning of the moving ship navigation state in bridge waters, provide a reference for the inland bridge anti-ship collision active early warning measures, provide technical support for the navigation safety of the bridge group waters, provide technical means of the navigation safety management in inland bridge waters for the water safety authorities. This technology use the video moving target detection algorithm as the core, the AForge.NET kit as the method to developing the bridge anti-ship collision active early warning. Through the measured experimental, aiming at inland bridge waters environment, can make effective detection and recognition of the moving ship in the bridge waters background. The video image and the actual scene are combined to create an active early warning model in bridge waters, analyze the moving ship appeared in bridge waters, through image processing to predict the navigation of moving ship, compare real-time positional relationship of the moving ship and bridge pier, give a moving ship risk coefficient, as shown in Figure 7.The study has practical significance for the navigation safety of inland bridge waters, provide technical reference for the inland bridge anti-ship collision active early warning measures.
Figure 7. Infrared and video detection of high level channel bridges
5)Turbine simulator technology
The system takes the cabin of 5600TEUcontainershipas the simulate object, including the Auto Chief Ⅳremote control system, the SSU8810 hostmachine securitysystemandDGS 8800eelectronicgovernorsystem. All of the functionsconfirm to the requirements of conferring certificationsto seamen by theIMOorganization andChina Maritime Safety Administration. The whole set ofsimulatorsincludes thesimulationcabin, simulationcentralized control room, thesimulationdrivingcontrolroom, simulationchief engineer room, cabin pipingdiagramsroomand facultymonitor room.The analog devices include console which next to the host machine, the cabin centralized console, ship power station main distribution screen, emergency distribution screen, auxiliary monitoring station, faculty monitoring stations and 17 starter boxes next to the auxiliary equipment machine. The turbine simulation center has completed the research and development of the SMSC2010 turbine simulator .In addition, it can meet the requirements of turbine simulator training ,promulgated by the National Maritime Bureau recently .The center can provide customers with a good engineer training, and has accepted the wide recognition by maritime academy in the domestic and internationaland the maritime training institutions. Its productions extend all over China including Shanghai, Nanjing, Tianjin, Zhenjiang, Dalian, Hangzhou, Fuzhou, Guangzhou, Hainan, Ningbo, Beijing, Shenyang , Dandong, Hunchun, Jiamusi, Hefei, Wuhan, Huizhou, Qinhuangdao, Jinan and so on.
Figure 8. Turbine simulator laboratory
Figure 9. Turbine simulator control console
Figure 10. Turbine simulator for large dynamic simulation operation screen
6) Refrigerated Logistics Monitoring Laboratory
The Refrigerated Logistics Monitoring Laboratory has developed the Binary Ice vacuum preparation system (the refrigerated logistics simulation platform schematic is showed in Figure 11) The system is a technological innovation project approved by the Shanghai Municipal Education Commission and is also the first domestic vacuum ice-making device with self-owned intellectual property rights. The system ,using vacuum technology to produce internationally leading binary ice ,has several advantages, for example, the simple structure, the high efficiency of refrigeration cooling, energy saving and environmental. At present, the Binary Ice vacuum preparation system project has possessed itself of more than a dozen self-owned intellectual property rights, meanwhile, it has won the Innovation Award of China International Industry Fair.
Figure 11. Refrigerated logistics integrated simulation platform schematics
6) The online dynamic monitoring of the ship and the dynamic data excavating of the massive ship
Online ship dynamic monitoring and statistical analysis system for shipping provide enterprises and users for ship dynamic monitoring and statistical analysis in the public network platform, and provide users for a convenient and intuitive ship dynamic service, wherever the user is , he can be informed of the exact location of the ship, as long as searching to the Internet, even the mobile Internet as shown in Figure 16.Besides,users can track ship movement around of the world, And the following services is provided for registered users by AIS, the Inmarsat and Beidou satellite technology:
China's coastal electronic chart objects marked searching services (more than 7700 objects marked on charts)
AIS ship dynamic monitoring WEB services on global coastal waters (more than 34,000 ships online)
Coastal waters of AIS ship dynamic monitoring with telephone services (more than 34,000 ships online)
The ship dynamic monitoring based on the Beidou ship station (applicable to Sino-Indian Line, O Line, routes in Northeast Asia, Southeast Asia routes, etc.)
the contact information of the pre-arrival ship Searching (over 170,000) which is now transferred.
Figure 12 Online ship dynamic monitoring and the massive ship dynamic data mining system
4. Base construction target
Lots of the science and technology in the field of shipping and commercialization with the advanced level at home and abroad are obtained to improve the international competitiveness of our shipping simulation, the center of the construction becomes a shipping integrated simulation technology innovation and industry incubation base, from this, the international competitiveness of us in the field of the maritime simulation has improved. A research laboratory as well as a test base has been built. Through interdisciplinary integration, the domestic first-class research environment has come true. The centre attracts international and domestic researchers to the shipping simulation technology owing to project R & D fund, and became the stage of international cooperation and exchange. Using widely in the high-tech maritime simulation has been promoted with gathering and cultivating talents. Initially, the centre became the first-class engineering research center for sustainable development.