Autonomous Ship Safe Navigation using Smoothing A* Algorithm
Yong Ma, Langxiong Gan, Yuanzhou Zheng, Jing Zhang · The Open Cybernetics & Systemics Journal · 2015
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.