A real-time multi-ship collision avoidance decision-making system for autonomous ships considering ship motion uncertainty

Abstract

Ship autonomous collision avoidance has attracted increasing attention in recent years. However, more attention is paid to the scenario in which the target ship keeps its course and speed. Less attention is paid to the development of a collision avoidance decision-making system under the uncertainty of the target ship's movement in a complex multi-ship encounter situation. Based on the idea of model predictive control (MPC), this paper proposes an autonomous ship collision avoidance decision-making system (CADMS) suitable for the uncertainty of ship motion. The CADMS includes four modules: collision risk analysis module, control and execution module, ship trajectory prediction module and collision avoidance decision-making model. The proposed model can be implemented in the collision avoidance decision-making system for safe navigation or it can be included in the ship autonomous navigation process. The decision-making model is achieved from a risk identification-motion prediction-ship control-scheme implementation perspective, and the dynamic and uncertainty features of the ship action (i.e., alter course or change speed) are considered in the modelling process. The real-time rolling update of ship collision avoidance decisions is realised based on the time series rolling method. Four scenarios are designed to demonstrate the collision avoidance decision-making system's performance. The results show that the proposed collision avoidance decision-making system is a reasonable and effective system for collision avoidance, particularly in multi-ship encounter situations of target ships suddenly altering course or change speed.