Autonomous sailing boats are a valuable resource for ocean monitoring, sampling and surveillance due to their intrinsic very low energy requirements and extreme capability for long term navigation. However, the extended presence in the ocean is vulnerable to a multitude of hazards that may compromise the success of a mission. Although the conventional manned sea crafts must comply to the international rules of the road (or COLREGS), unmanned (small and slow) robotic boats should actively anticipate close encounters with (large and fast) ships that in practical situations may not be able to avoid collisions with small vessels. This paper proposes a set of simple rules for implementing a defensive and conservative collision avoidance strategy for autonomous sailing boats, based solely on the AIS data received from large ships.
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