Safety Confirmation of Ship's Crew Using Cell-phone with GPS Receiver and Wireless LAN.

Ships and their cargos have been managed safely by positioning report system. However, little attention has been paid to safety of crew's works with danger. The attempt that used PHS inboard was before by the present authors. However, the functions were just voice call and mail exchange. The data acquisition from the terminal by proper control was not possible. Thus the position of the terminal was not available. As for the cell phone of next generation, GPS receiver and wireless LAN are installed by manufacturers. Therefore, we propose a system which uses a cell-phone with GPS receiver on a ship in order to promote the safety of ship's crew. We checked the availability of cell-phone GPS receiver at thirty different points inboard. The positioning was not possible in the areas further than 4m from the window. Then, we proposed the system which follows the positions of the crews and confirms their safety inboard by using the VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) function by wireless LAN.