Proceedings of the International Naval Engineering Conference & Exhibition (INEC)
Published October 5, 2020 | Version v1
Conference paper Open

Towards intelligent navigation in future autonomous surface vessels: developments, challenges and strategies

Creators

  • 1. Marine Research Group, Department of Mechanical Engineering, University College London

Description

There is an increasing trend in developing autonomous surface vessels (ASVs) for a range of maritime activities including transportation, search and rescue and naval operations. Autonomy potentially offers economic benefits, reduced cost, increased operation efficiency and reduced risk. Autonomy means less reliance on human operators, replaced with intelligent decision-making systems. Currently, such intelligence is achieved using sophisticated autonomous navigation systems which may be considered as consisting of three core modules; namely the sensor and data acquisition system, the intelligent planning system, and the automatic control (auto-pilot) system. This paper discusses the state-of-the-art development with a particular interest in reliable and accurate environment awareness. Advantages of using key technologies such as filtering algorithms, fuzzy-logic and statistical learning in autonomous navigation for ASVs have been demonstrated and discussed.
Future work also reflects intriguing insights in employing heterogenous sensory modules including LiDAR, radar and vision systems in next generation maritime autonomous navigation.

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