In spite of the cyclic slump in the ship building industry, Highlander is enjoying a satisfactory year for deliveries of its integrated navigation systems. The Highlander INS development program was initiated seven years ago. It has taken copious investment of capital to enable what has become one of the company’s most significant and intensive engineering programs.
Advancement in electronics and information and computer technology is fully impacting shipboard systems just as it is every other industrial discipline. Today’s modern seagoing vessel sails with anti-collision radar, electronic nautical charts, automatic steering, acoustic depth sounding, satellite positioning, precision gyrocompass and a myriad of other sensors and devices. INS marries all of these into a single unified system built on a fully redundant network. There is an immense benefit to the ship’s officer who, while standing in one place, can view the entirety of the information produced by his ship’s navigation and automation devices. That is in stark contrast to yesteryear’s ship’s wheelhouse crammed with cabinets, boxes, displays, control units and whatnot, each of them needing to be observed separately on its own, impelling the officer to scurry around in an effort to grasp all of the information.
Highlander has delivered thirty-five integrated navigation systems this year, all of them to newbuildings in China. Marketing INS to foreign shipyards is commencing now.
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