Pilot Portable Unit (PPU)

A portable navigation kit a marine pilot brings aboard for berthing and confined-water transits, giving an independent, high-accuracy position picture not dependent on the ship’s bridge instruments. A PPU pairs a laptop running piloting software with its own sensors: a precise GNSS antenna, often with RTK or a rate-of-turn/heading reference, sometimes plugged into the ship’s pilot-plug AIS data per IEC 61162. It displays predicted position, drift, rate of turn, and distance-to-berth in real time, supporting parallel berthing within centimeters where RTK corrections are available.