Autonomous ship safe navigation using smoothing A* Algorithm

Abstract

Using reasonable and efficient autonomous technology for path planning can effectively improve the safety of ship navigation and can reduce human errors of maritime accidents. The planned path by A* algorithm is flawed with broken lines, many turning points and numerous transitional frequencies under the environment modeled by grid method. Smoothing A* algorithm is adopted to delete the removable points which prolong the planned path length. After all the realities of ship navigation are taken into account, smoothing A* algorithm is applied to resolve safe navigation problem for the ship. With the proposed smoothing A* algorithm, simulation results show that the conflict-free path can be planned for ships under different circumstances with static and dynamic obstacles and abide by the COLREGS.