which is normally worn by every crew member of a ship
or an offshore platform. These standard vest was modified
with an integrated Automatic Identification System (AIS)
transmitter which activates itself after the contact with
saline water and determines sequentially the position of
the POB by (D)GPS. The vest system sends this position
as AIS message 14 1
. After receiving this alarm message,
the Search-and-Rescue-Control-Station activates the autonomous
rescue vessel which is shown in Fig. 1.
In contrast to the standard rescue procedure, it is used
an unmanned rescue vessel which was designed as a free
fall boat. Furthermore, the design of this free fall rescue
vessel guarantees that it will be self-righting, Clauss et al.
(2010).
After the release, the rescue vessel moves autonomously
as fast as possible to the POB and maintains a minimal
safety distance to the POB. At this point, an operator on
board the parent ship assumes the control of the rescue
vessel. Based on of established video transmission, the
rescue vessel will be brought into a salvage position and
the POB will be saved with a particularly developed pickup-device.
After the successful salvage of the POB, the
rescue vessel and the parent ship maneuvre to each other.
At the end of the operation, the parent ship picks up
the rescue vessel with a specially designed pick-up device,
explained in Kucharzewski et al. (2011). Fig. 2 shows the
entire Search-and-Rescue-Scenario.