In this paper, a ship's guidance system using a simple tracking control rule is introduced. The proposed system, when the appropriate waypoints and speeds on there are given, can guide exponentially an actual ship's track to the given one. According to actual experiment, the results are follows. (1) The tracking to the desired track could be done with good precision by controlling a distance damping parameter of the exponential function. (2) This tracking method can be easily applied not only to a berthing maneuvering but also to a large course altering with constant speed. (3) The automatic gain tuning method of the autopilot using a relay control gives good results for course keeping control. (4) The position estimator for gaining a precise position using the Kalman Filtering technique for DGPS system is effective.
