Abstract: The vessel azimuth control apparatus has an azimuth control unit that outputs a steering-angle command signal for making a vessel turn to an azimuth to which the vessel should travel, based on an azimuth command signal generated by an azimuth command generation unit, a yaw-angle signal, and a yaw-angular-velocity signal, a steering-angle control unit that controls a rudder based on the steering-angle command signal, and a control gain adjustment unit that has a calculation feasibility determination unit for determining feasibility of calculation of frequency responses, based on the yaw-angle signal and the yaw-angular-velocity signal, and that calculates respective frequency responses of the yaw-angle signal and the yaw-angular-velocity signal for the steering-angle signal, when the calculation feasibility determination unit determines that calculation of frequency response are feasible, and then adjusts a control gain of the azimuth control unit.

Abstract: The objective is to obtain an azimuth control apparatus and an azimuth control method that require no excessive memory capacity and calculation time for information processing and can cope with a disturbance by adaptively adjusting a control gain while calculating changing vessel parameters online. The vessel azimuth control apparatus has an azimuth control unit that outputs a steering-angle command signal for making a vessel turn to an azimuth to which the vessel should travel, based on an azimuth command signal generated by an azimuth command generation unit, a yaw-angle signal, and a yaw-angular-velocity signal, a steering-angle control unit that controls a rudder based on the steering-angle command signal, and a control gain adjustment unit that calculates respective frequency responses of the yaw-angle signal and the yaw-angular-velocity signal to a steering-angle signal outputted by a steering-angle detection unit and then adjusts a control gain of the azimuth control unit.