Solving Multi-Ship Encounter Situations by Evolutionary Sets of Cooperating Trajectories

The paper introduces a new approach to solving multi-ship encounter situations by combining some of the assumptions of game theory with evolutionary programming techniques. A multi-ship encounter is here modelled as a game played by "thinking players" - the ships of different and possibly changing strategies. The solution - an optimal set of cooperating (non-colliding) trajectories is then found by means of evolutionary algorithms. The paper contains the description of the problem formulation as well as the details of the evolutionary program. The method can be used for both open waters and restricted water regions.