A New Progress of Autonomous Collision Avoidance Method for Maritime Autonomous Surface Ships

摘要

A modified APF method including the complex environmental modelling is developed to address the issue of CA with dynamic TSs and static obstacles, including emergency situations. Additionally, appropriate functional and safety requirements are added in the corresponding virtual forces to ensure COLREGs-constrained and goal based behaviour for the OS's CA actions. It can take account of the Rules 13-17 of COLREGs, allowing for early and substantial CA actions; also furthest alleviate the local minimum problem inherent in the APF method because of the steering force of the OS is perpendicular to the displacement direction of OS relative to that of the TS. The length of the real-time planning path is relatively optimized because the CA force has a component force pointing to the goal, as long as there is no collision risk, the OS moves to the goal. Simulations show that the method is fast, effective, and deterministic for path planning in complex situations. The method can be used in autonomous navigation systems for MASS to provide reliable automatic collision avoidance decisions constrained by rules, and contribute to the design of other automatic navigation systems operated without human interaction.