Autonomous ship navigation in a mixed environment, where remote-controlled, autonomous and manned vessels are interacting, is considered. Since these vessels can have various encounter situations, adequate knowledge on such situations should be acquired to take appropriate navigation actions. That has often been categorized as situation awareness in a mixed environment, where appropriate tools and techniques to extract the respective knowledge on ship encounter situations should be developed. The collision risk assessment procedure has an important role in the same knowledge and that can eventually be used towards the respective collision avoidance actions. Hence, possible ship collision and near-miss situations can be avoided by both humans as well as systems due to their actions. Ship collision avoidance actions are regulated by the International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea 1972 (COLREGs) in open sea areas and additional local navigation rules and regulations can also enforce especially in confined waters and maritime traffic lanes. It is expected that the COLREGs and other navigation rules and regulations will be interpreted by both humans as well as systems in future vessels and those interpretations will be executed as collision avoidance actions by the respective vessels in a mixed environment. Adequate understanding on situation awareness should be achieved to overcome possible regulatory failure due to human and system decisions in these situations. Hence, this study focuses on identifying such challenges in future ship encounters with possible solutions to improve situation awareness in a mixed environment as the main contribution.
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