Generating Structured Set of Encounters for Verifying Automated Collision and Grounding Avoidance Systems

Abstract

It is a clear consensus in the maritime industry that ships, both conventional and with automated Collision and Grounding Avoidance (CAGA) systems, shall be navigated following the Convention on the International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea (COLREG), ensuring a level playing field and a common understanding of the responsibilities between conventional and autonomous ships, allowing safe co-existence in the waterways. Simulation-based testing is expected to play an important role to explore and document safety and the ability to adhere to the COLREG, as it allows for rigorous testing of performance and failure handling before the software is installed on the ship. Many terms in COLREG used to specify acceptable behavior are qualitative, such as “ample time” and “apparent maneuver” and need to be viewed in light of a specific situation to be applied in practice. As the COLREG includes a large set of obligations specific to different types of situations, a significant number of ship encounters spread out across the different aspects of the regulations will be necessary to enable any judgments about the overall ability to adhere to these rules. The work presented in this paper provides a method and software toolbox for generating ship encounters to allow a systematic assessment of the vessel’s ability to act according to COLREG using simulation-based testing, and it is made freely available to vendors, students, or any other actors involved in the development or assurance of algorithms for automated collision and grounding avoidance systems.