From Vessel Trajectories to Safety-Critical Encounter Scenarios: A Generative AI Framework for Autonomous Ship Digital Testing

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Sun, Sijin, Zhao, Liangbin, Deng, Ming, Fu, Xiuju
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
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author Sun, Sijin
Zhao, Liangbin
Deng, Ming
Fu, Xiuju
author_facet Sun, Sijin
Zhao, Liangbin
Deng, Ming
Fu, Xiuju
contents Digital testing has emerged as a key paradigm for the development and verification of autonomous maritime navigation systems, yet the availability of realistic and diverse safety-critical encounter scenarios remains limited. Existing approaches either rely on handcrafted templates, which lack realism, or extract cases directly from historical data, which cannot systematically expand rare high-risk situations. This paper proposes a data-driven framework that converts large-scale Automatic Identification System (AIS) trajectories into structured safety-critical encounter scenarios. The framework combines generative trajectory modeling with automated encounter pairing and temporal parameterization to enable scalable scenario construction while preserving real traffic characteristics. To enhance trajectory realism and robustness under noisy AIS observations, a multi-scale temporal variational autoencoder is introduced to capture vessel motion dynamics across different temporal resolutions. Experiments on real-world maritime traffic flows demonstrate that the proposed method improves trajectory fidelity and smoothness, maintains statistical consistency with observed data, and enables the generation of diverse safety-critical encounter scenarios beyond those directly recorded. The resulting framework provides a practical pathway for building scenario libraries to support digital testing, benchmarking, and safety assessment of autonomous navigation and intelligent maritime traffic management systems. Code is available at https://anonymous.4open.science/r/traj-gen-anonymous-review.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2603_28067
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle From Vessel Trajectories to Safety-Critical Encounter Scenarios: A Generative AI Framework for Autonomous Ship Digital Testing
Sun, Sijin
Zhao, Liangbin
Deng, Ming
Fu, Xiuju
Machine Learning
Digital testing has emerged as a key paradigm for the development and verification of autonomous maritime navigation systems, yet the availability of realistic and diverse safety-critical encounter scenarios remains limited. Existing approaches either rely on handcrafted templates, which lack realism, or extract cases directly from historical data, which cannot systematically expand rare high-risk situations. This paper proposes a data-driven framework that converts large-scale Automatic Identification System (AIS) trajectories into structured safety-critical encounter scenarios. The framework combines generative trajectory modeling with automated encounter pairing and temporal parameterization to enable scalable scenario construction while preserving real traffic characteristics. To enhance trajectory realism and robustness under noisy AIS observations, a multi-scale temporal variational autoencoder is introduced to capture vessel motion dynamics across different temporal resolutions. Experiments on real-world maritime traffic flows demonstrate that the proposed method improves trajectory fidelity and smoothness, maintains statistical consistency with observed data, and enables the generation of diverse safety-critical encounter scenarios beyond those directly recorded. The resulting framework provides a practical pathway for building scenario libraries to support digital testing, benchmarking, and safety assessment of autonomous navigation and intelligent maritime traffic management systems. Code is available at https://anonymous.4open.science/r/traj-gen-anonymous-review.
title From Vessel Trajectories to Safety-Critical Encounter Scenarios: A Generative AI Framework for Autonomous Ship Digital Testing
topic Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.28067