APPARATUS AND METHOD FOR ROUTE PLANNING

A route planning apparatus is provided for planning a navigation route of a ship. The route planning apparatus includes a display to display a chart on a screen; and an operation interface configured to designate a position in the screen. In addition, the route planning apparatus includes a storage configured to store one or more potential base points that may be a potential base point of a waypoint; a processing circuitry configured to: set a waypoint on the chart in response to a navigator's operation; extract the base points within a predetermined range of the set waypoint as a reference from the storage; and a determine the extracted potential base point to be the base point of the set waypoint.