Furlong Vision: Advancing marine autonomy through a robust and cost-effective position referencing system

对于数量迅速增长的船舶而言，增加先进导航系统的冗余层以准确测量位置和航向对于支持特定任务的许可/安全案例至关重要，这些案例涉及：* 自动化功能的成熟法规，包括动态定位（DP：用于在离岸或沿海环境中保持固定的位置、姿态和航向）。例如，在DP基础上构建，以实现自主对接（渡轮，游轮），或无人驾驶货船的端到端操作厘米精度的最先进的全球导航卫星系统的普遍组合（GNSS，用于位置感测）和惯性传感器（用于定向和姿态感测）具有弱点，需要独立的局部位置参考来实现冗余。没有任何现有的本地位置参考系统可以实际地和经济地提供稳健的性能、操作可用性和长期可靠性以满足这些快速发展的要求，任何随后的冗余损失都会导致运营商的重大运营损失和船舶停机时间。Furlong Sensing正在开发一种首款视觉本地定位参考系统，用于处理超过15，300艘大型船舶（> 300 GWT）的船队，仅使用基于摄像机的视觉：1。在高保真原始特征地图中修复位置和航向2。对船舶的GNSS惯性系统进行完整性检查跨领域输出加强了英国在开拓传感和自主系统技术方面的整体地位，适用于新的应用领域。船舶运营商、供应链和更广泛的英国公众也将获得相应的好处。

For a rapidly growing number of ships, increasing layers of redundancy in advanced navigation systems to accurately measure position and heading are vital to underpin mission-specific permissions/safety cases that address:* Mature regulations for automated functions, including dynamic positioning (DP: used for maintaining fixed position, attitude and heading in off-shore or coastal environments)* Emerging codes/standards for fully autonomous ship functions, e.g. building on DP to enable autonomous docking (ferries, cruise liners), or end-to-end operations of unmanned cargo vesselsThe prevalent combination of cm-accurate state-of-the-art Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS, used for position sensing) and inertial sensors (used for orientation and attitude sensing) has vulnerabilities, requiring independent local position referencing to achieve redundancy.However, no existing local position reference system can practically and cost-effectively deliver the robust performance, operational availability and long-term reliability to meet these rapidly evolving requirements, with any subsequent loss of redundancy causing significant operational losses and vessel downtime for operators.In response, Furlong Sensing are developing a first-of-a-kind visual local positioning reference system for ships addressing a fleet of over 15,300 large vessels (\>300GWT), using only camera-based vision to:1. Fix location and heading within a high-fidelity raw feature map2. Perform integrity checks against the vessels' GNSS-inertial systemsCross-cutting outputs strengthen the UK's overall position in pioneering sensing and autonomous systems technologies, applied to a new application area. Corresponding benefits accrue for vessel operators, the supply chain and wider UK public.