A smart navigation and collision avoidance approach for Autonomous Surface Vehicle

Abstract

Marine traffic rules play an important role for all marine vessels to reduce the collision risk, thus The International Marine Organization (IMO) defined The International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea (COLREGs) in 1972. All marine crafts including Autonomous Surface Vehicle (ASV) should follow COLREGs to avoid the collision when they encounter each other at sea or other water areas. However, the target ship may be located at the position which can cause collision if the ASV is forced to make a COLREGs compliant evasive manoeuvre. Thus, the navigation system of ASV is required to have the ability to identify the encounter situation and determine whether the ASV should obey the COLREGs or not when avoiding the target ship. To perform smart navigation and collision avoidance, the encounter situation division diagram is combined with Artificial Potential Field (APF) as the guidance system. The simulation results illustrate that the proposed guidance system successfully achieved the navigation of ASV at open sea and avoiding collision with moving target ship for different encounter situations.