Impacts of GPS Spoofing on Path Planning of Unmanned Surface Ships

Jia Wang,Tieshan Li,C L Philip Chen,Yang Xiao

doi:10.3390/electronics11050801

Abstract

The Artificial Potential Field (APF) method is a classical path planning method for unmanned ships, relying on Global Positioning System (GPS) positioning information for path planning. Unfortunately, once the path planning algorithm uses inaccurate or even fake data, it will lead to ship collision, grounding, or deviation from the course, causing severe economic losses and causing significant security risks to other sailing ships. This paper aims to study the impacts of GPS spoofing on the path planning of unmanned ships. We propose a GPS attack and study GPS spoofing of path planning based on the APF method for an unmanned ship by a low-cost software-defined radio, which causes the unmanned ship to deviate from the course. Our simulation tests show that this method has significant impacts on the path planning results of the APF method.

Highlights

Unmanned Surface Vehicles (USVs) are ships that operate on the water surface without a crew [1,2]
We study the security of Global Positioning System (GPS) and propose a GPS attack using a low-cost softwaredefined radio, which can cause deviations to the result of path planning based on the artificial potential field method, leading to path yaw
The research on path planning of unmanned ships assumes that the data from GPS receivers are reliable

Summary

Introduction

Unmanned Surface Vehicles (USVs) are ships that operate on the water surface without a crew [1,2]. Its core idea is to assume that an unmanned ship moves and is controlled by a resultant force under two virtual forces: a target point has “gravity” on the unmanned ship, and some obstacles have “repulsive force” on the unmanned ship [8,9] Since this method has the problem of local optimum, many researchers have improved it [10–14]. The improved APF method calculates the steering angle and heading based on its own ship’s position, target ship’s position, ship’s speed, target ships’ speed, ship’s heading, and target ships’ heading to avoid collision with dynamic ships. These data are obtained by Automatic Identification System (AIS), Global Positioning System (GPS), speed log, compass, and radar. The papers [15,16] have introduced these data collection and path planning algorithms in detail

Objectives

Methods

Conclusion