New AlphaMINDS River application by JRC/Alphatron Marine
February 25 2021
Last month, Alphatron Marine's R&D engineers completed and commissioned the first AlphaMINDS River application on the inland MTS ‘Prinses’ together with the engineers of our inland shipping department. AlphaMINDS River is completely based on our software Lynx, an in-house developed cross-platform and modular SCADA software for the maritime industry.
When the captain of the MTS ‘Prinses’ starts his engines, AlphaMINDS River will display a true image of the ‘Prinses’ in the correct position on the chart. In the application different layers can be switched on and off, depending on the operational situation or on what the user finds convenient or necessary.
This project also involved installing peripherals like, ultrasonic distance sensors and echo sounder sensors, GPS and GPS compass stern and a ROT-indicator. Together with these sensors, the functions of the AlphaMINDS River can be fully exploited.
One of the most innovative features for inland shipping is ‘lock approach’. In this function two so-called ‘lock lines’ are shown, which indicate from the outside ship what the path of the ship is for the coming minutes. These dynamically drawn lines are used to indicate when entering a lock whether the ship is sailing in the correct direction and speed.
‘Ship predicting’ can also be a very useful feature. This option displays a transparent image of the ship at the predicted position at the prediction time. The prediction time can be set to the following values: 10, 20, 30 and 60 seconds. It also possible to activate the option ‘curved prediction lines’. From each of the four corners of the ship, a point will be predicted every second of the set prediction time. These points will be dynamically drawn as lines and this will give the captain an even better predicted overview.
Are you interested in receiving more information about the new AlphaMINDS River application? Please contact the sales team at inland@alphatronmarine.com.