COLREGs Compliant Collision Avoidance and Grounding Prevention for Autonomous Marine Navigation

Fuente: arXiv
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Autores principales: Patil, Mayur S., Sudharsan, Nataraj, Ammula, Veneela, Tomdio, Jude, Wang, Jin, Kei, Michael, Rathinam, Sivakumar, Pagilla, Prabhakar R.
Formato: Preprint
Publicado: 2026
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author Patil, Mayur S.
Sudharsan, Nataraj
Ammula, Veneela
Tomdio, Jude
Wang, Jin
Kei, Michael
Rathinam, Sivakumar
Pagilla, Prabhakar R.
author_facet Patil, Mayur S.
Sudharsan, Nataraj
Ammula, Veneela
Tomdio, Jude
Wang, Jin
Kei, Michael
Rathinam, Sivakumar
Pagilla, Prabhakar R.
contents Maritime Autonomous Surface Ships (MASS) are increasingly regarded as a promising solution to address crew shortages, improve navigational safety, and improve operational efficiency in the maritime industry. Nevertheless, the reliable deployment of MASS in real-world environments remains a significant challenge, particularly in congested waters where the majority of maritime accidents occur. This emphasizes the need for safe and regulation-aware motion planning strategies for MASS that are capable of operating under dynamic maritime conditions. This paper presents a unified motion planning method for MASS that achieves real time collision avoidance, compliance with International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea (COLREGs), and grounding prevention. The proposed work introduces a convex optimization method that integrates velocity obstacle-based (VO) collision constraints, COLREGs-based directional constraints, and bathymetry-based grounding constraints to generate computationally efficient, rule-compliant optimal velocity selection. To enhance robustness, the classical VO method is extended to consider uncertainty in the position and velocity estimates of the target vessel. Unnavigable shallow water regions obtained from bathymetric data, which are inherently nonconvex, are approximated via convex geometries using a integer linear programming (ILP), allowing grounding constraints to be incorporated into the motion planning. The resulting optimization generates optimal and dynamically feasible input velocities that meet collision avoidance, regulatory compliance, kinodynamic limits, and grounding prevention requirements. Simulation results involving multi-vessel encounters demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method in producing safe and regulation-compliant maneuvers, highlighting the suitability of the proposed approach for real time autonomous maritime navigation.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2603_02484
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle COLREGs Compliant Collision Avoidance and Grounding Prevention for Autonomous Marine Navigation
Patil, Mayur S.
Sudharsan, Nataraj
Ammula, Veneela
Tomdio, Jude
Wang, Jin
Kei, Michael
Rathinam, Sivakumar
Pagilla, Prabhakar R.
Robotics
Optimization and Control
Maritime Autonomous Surface Ships (MASS) are increasingly regarded as a promising solution to address crew shortages, improve navigational safety, and improve operational efficiency in the maritime industry. Nevertheless, the reliable deployment of MASS in real-world environments remains a significant challenge, particularly in congested waters where the majority of maritime accidents occur. This emphasizes the need for safe and regulation-aware motion planning strategies for MASS that are capable of operating under dynamic maritime conditions. This paper presents a unified motion planning method for MASS that achieves real time collision avoidance, compliance with International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea (COLREGs), and grounding prevention. The proposed work introduces a convex optimization method that integrates velocity obstacle-based (VO) collision constraints, COLREGs-based directional constraints, and bathymetry-based grounding constraints to generate computationally efficient, rule-compliant optimal velocity selection. To enhance robustness, the classical VO method is extended to consider uncertainty in the position and velocity estimates of the target vessel. Unnavigable shallow water regions obtained from bathymetric data, which are inherently nonconvex, are approximated via convex geometries using a integer linear programming (ILP), allowing grounding constraints to be incorporated into the motion planning. The resulting optimization generates optimal and dynamically feasible input velocities that meet collision avoidance, regulatory compliance, kinodynamic limits, and grounding prevention requirements. Simulation results involving multi-vessel encounters demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method in producing safe and regulation-compliant maneuvers, highlighting the suitability of the proposed approach for real time autonomous maritime navigation.
title COLREGs Compliant Collision Avoidance and Grounding Prevention for Autonomous Marine Navigation
topic Robotics
Optimization and Control
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.02484