An IoT based smart berthing (parking) system for vessels and ports

Abstract

Internet of Things, Big Data, Cloud Computing and such last model technologies are taking a pace towards every part of our life. It is worth to mention that novel technologies are being directed towards obtaining more improvements in the field of Marine. Applying the IoT in particular industries makes that industry’s working process automation and creates various smart devices in the field. Also, in Marine, the process comes out identically to those industries. Namely, smart ports and smart ships substitute traditional ports and vessels. However, it should be considered that applying the technologies in the fields is not effortless. Perhaps, this process should be done pace by pace. So, building a smart ship and smart port which is expected to be the fundamental basement of shipping requires much time. To obtain it, traditional versions of the objects in the field should be alerted to smart substitutions and the processes also should be automated by dividing them into parts. In this paper, we presented a system which is dedicated to automating the mooring process of ships. The premium target of our IoT based system is finding vacant places automatically by using the sensors fixed at the port and transfer the data to the ships which are going to berth. In the experimental system, we used a smartphone instead of a ship for client-side of the system and made one Android Application that called “Smart Ship Berthing” instead of ship software. And for our proposed server-side system experiment, we utilized Raspberry Pi with Ultrasonic Sensor to detect a ship and modify empty place to berth.