Ship Navigation Route Planning Using Topology of Sea Ice Channels Extracted from High Resolution Satellite Images

Ship navigation route planning in ice-covered sea is important for the safety of voyages. Sea ice channels, only in which vessels can pass through, change their topology as a result of the appearance and disappearance of sea ice. This paper provides a route planning method for ships that travel through the sea ice channels based on high resolution satellite images. The main processes of the method include: (1) Classification of sea ice using high resolution satellite images. (2) Extraction of sea ice channels topology based on the classification results. (3) Automated route planning based on the topology of sea ice channels. The key algorithms in the processes are presented in this paper. Practically, we used the aforementioned scheme to find the optimal path for voyages on several simulated missions. The simulations indicate that the proposed method is very practical and time-efficient for route planning with high resolution satellite images, while traditional pixel-based-algorithm is unable to cope with large-size images and the dynamic change of the sea ice. Moreover, the proposed method can take the advantages of the widely available high resolution satellite data and the near real-time sea ice observation. Therefore, the proposed method is potential to be applied on the navigation system for vessels travelling in the north and south polar regions.