Isochrone-Based Collision Avoidance for Enhanced Ship Safety in Confined Waterways

Paper in proceeding, 2025

Collision avoidance is one of the most critical issues in ensuring a ship's safety. Ship maneuvering for collision avoidance first demands high real-time performance and rapid response from algorithms. In practical applications, arrival time constraints also need to be taken care of. This paper proposes an optimization algorithm to address collision avoidance challenges. Based on the traditional Isochrone method, it optimizes sailing safety while possessing computational efficiency and incorporating sailing time considerations. Its grid partition strategy can adapt to complex and changing terrains for sailing in confined waterways, while also considering regulation compliance e.g. with COLREGs. The effectiveness of the proposed algorithm is demonstrated by simulations of multiple obstacles collision avoidance in different sailing scenarios. The computation and reaction of the algorithm is within 10 seconds which allows for real-time usage.