RENEW: Risk- and Energy-Aware Navigation in Dynamic Waterways

TL;DR

RENEW is a novel path planning framework for autonomous surface vehicles that dynamically balances safety and energy efficiency in complex, changing maritime environments by integrating risk assessment and adaptive trajectory optimization.

Contribution

It introduces a unified risk- and energy-aware navigation strategy with hierarchical planning, addressing non-navigability and topological diversity in real-world maritime scenarios.

Findings

Validated with real-world ocean data.

First framework to jointly address adaptive non-navigability and topological path diversity.

Ensures safety and energy efficiency in dynamic waterways.

Abstract

We present RENEW, a global path planner for Autonomous Surface Vehicle (ASV) in dynamic environments with external disturbances (e.g., water currents). RENEW introduces a unified risk- and energy-aware strategy that ensures safety by dynamically identifying non-navigable regions and enforcing adaptive safety constraints. Inspired by maritime contingency planning, it employs a best-effort strategy to maintain control under adverse conditions. The hierarchical architecture combines high-level constrained triangulation for topological diversity with low-level trajectory optimization within safe corridors. Validated with real-world ocean data, RENEW is the first framework to jointly address adaptive non-navigability and topological path diversity for robust maritime navigation.