An applicable multi-ship collision avoidance control method based on velocity obstacle

Automatic collision avoidance from obstacles is important, but the conventional methods for ship collision avoidance emphasize how to design the feasible routes for collision avoidance basing on a ship’s real time position, not to consider the dynamics or control for ship.. In this paper, an applicable multi-ship collision avoidance control method on the basis of the directions of relative velocity is presented, which applies to the routing plan of collision avoidance and ship motion control simultaneously. This method consists of three main steps. The first step is extracting/calculating basic motion and position parameters of the own ship and target ships. The second step is calculating suitable real time directions of velocity of the own ship basing on the method of velocity obstacle. The third step is controlling the variable transformation and algorithm design. This method is simple and flexible. It can be applied to the real time multi-ship collision avoidance, and is very feasible. Simulation results show that the algorithm has good effects. © 2016, UK Simulation Society. All rights reserved.