Cooperative path planning algorithm for marine surface vessels

Effective and practical collision avoidance manoeuvres through traffic are still one of the major problems hindering the development and adoption of a fully autonomous vessel. There have been studies on the subject but the majority only consider the traffic from a single vessel perspective while the others utilised stochastic based algorithms which are not suitable for marine navigation which demands consistency. This paper describes the development of a deterministic path planning algorithm that computes a practical and COLREGS compliant navigation path for vessels which are on a collision course. The algorithm was evaluated with a set of test cases, simulating various traffic scenarios. Different aspects of the algorithm, such as the output consistency from different perspectives, practicality of the navigation path, computational performance as well as future work, are discussed.

► A deterministic based path planning and collision avoidance algorithm for multiple ships is proposed. ► The algorithm outputs are COLREGS compliant. ► The algorithmic completeness issues of the algorithm were addressed. ► The algorithm outputs are consistent and practical from different perspectives.