AIS is a shipboard broadcast transponder system in which ships continually transmit their ID, position, course, speed and other data on VHF radio frequencies. With an AIS receiver, TIKI will read the data, and display the vessels position with a course and speed indicator on the chart.

When you move the mouse cursor to a vessel mark some information about the vessel will be dispayed in a pop up window. If you click on the vessel's mark a larger AIS Watch panel will appear and display more details like CPA (Closest Point Of Approach) and TCPA (Time to CPA), bearing and distance etc. All the vessels that you are receiving will be listed. With a single click you can show data from any vessel on the list.

The AIS vessels will normally be shown as a a circle with a course line in BLUE color. Whenever there is a collission danger (based upon your settings of minimum CPA and TCPA), the color of the vessel will change to RED. The default settings for warning are 200 meters for CPA and 2 minutes for TCPA, but you can change this in the AIS settings panel.

The length of the course line/ speed indicator shows the predicted position of the vessel in the number of minutes of the TCPA setting (default 2 minutes).

On large scale charts and/or zoomed in large vessels will be displayed in their true size.

The AIS receiver must be connected to a seperate COM-port or a virtual COM-port because the baud rate of AIS is 38400 (not 4800 like other NMEA 0183 instruments).

Even relatively inexpensive AIS receivers can provide better collision avoidance guidance than the automatic plotting (ARPA) seen on high-end radar. However, since not all floating objects are AIS equipped, this important new safety system is meant to be used in addition to radar, not instead of it.

AIS is mandatory on all commercial ships of 300 gross tonnage and upwards engaged on international voyages, cargo ships of 500 gross tonnage and upwards and passenger ships irrespective of size. Other smaller commercial ships, such as fishing vessels, will equip themselves with AIS transponders voluntarily since there are major safety benefits to using AIS