Available-Maneuvering-Margins-Based Ship Collision Alert System

The timing of a ship taking evasive maneuvers is crucial for the success of collision avoidance, which is affected by the perceived risk by the navigator. Therefore, we propose a collision alert system (CAS) based on the perceived risk by the navigator to trigger a ship’s evasive maneuvers in a timely manner to avoid close-quarters situations. The available maneuvering margins (AMM) with ship stability guarantees are selected as a proxy to reflect the perceived risk of a navigator; hence, the proposed CAS is referred to as an AMM-based CAS. Considering the dynamic nature of ship operations, the non-linear velocity obstacle method is utilized to identify the presence of collision risk to further activate this AMM-based CAS. The AMM of a ship are measured based on ship maneuverability and stability models, and the degree to which they violate the risk-perception-based ship domain determines the level of collision alert. Several typical encounter scenarios are selected from AIS data to demonstrate the feasibility of this AMM-based CAS. The promising results suggest that this proposed AMM-based CAS is applicable in both ship pair encounter and multi-vessel encounter scenarios. Collision risk can be accurately detected, and then a collision alert consistent with the risk severity is issued. This proposed AMM-based CAS has the potential to assist autonomous ships in understanding the risk level of the encounter situation and determining the timing for evasive maneuvers. The advantages and limitation of this proposed method are discussed