COLREGs based navigation of riverine Autonomous Surface Vehicle

The International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea (COLREGs) are defined by the International Marine Organization (IMO) to be followed by all marine vessels. Autonomous Surface Vehicle (ASV) is supposed to obey COLREGs when it is moving on the waterway. However, in some critical cases, the collision risk is high if the ASV follows the marine traffic rules when it encounters other vehicles. This paper presents an ASV that cruises in the river for river tracking and obstacles avoidance. To solve the conflict between following COLREGs and collision, encounter situation identification and Artificial Potential Field are combined to navigate the ASV in the river. The simulation results show that the ASV is able to make a rational decision to avoid collision and successfully navigated by the proposed method in a riverine environment with both static and dynamic obstacles.