A COLREGs-Compliant Conflict Resolution Strategy for Autonomous Surface Vehicles

TL;DR

This paper introduces COMCORE, a COLREGs-compliant conflict resolution strategy for autonomous surface vehicles that generates safe, optimized, and scalable collision-free trajectories in multi-vessel environments, validated through simulations and real-world experiments.

Contribution

It proposes a novel two-phase conflict resolution strategy that ensures COLREGs compliance while optimizing vessel trajectories for autonomous surface vehicles.

Findings

Effective collision avoidance in multi-vessel scenarios.

Low computational requirements for scalability.

Successful real-world implementation with two ASVs.

Abstract

This paper presents a novel conflict resolution strategy for autonomous surface vehicles (ASVs) to safely navigate and avoid collisions in a multi-vessel environment at sea. Collisions between two or more marine vessels must be avoided by following the International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea (COLREGs). We propose strategy a two-phase strategy called as COLREGs Compliant Conflict-Resolving (COMCORE) strategy, that generates collision-free trajectories for ASVs while complying with COLREGs. In phase-1, a shortest path for each agent is determined, while in phase-2 conflicts are detected and resolved by modifying the path in compliance with COLREGs. COMCORE solution optimises vessel trajectories for lower costs while also providing a safe and collision-free plan for each vessel. Simulation results are presented to show the applicability of COMCORE for larger number agents with very low computational requirement and hence scalable. Further, we experimentally demonstrate COMCORE for two ASVs in a lake to show its ability to determine solution and implementation capability in the real-world.