A New Method of Planning Collision Avoidance Manoeuvres for Multi-Target Encounter Situations

Abstract

In this paper the author introduces a new method of collision avoidance for multi-target encounters. The method combines the qualities of a sequence of necessary manoeuvres with some optimisation elements and supports any given ship domain. First the problem of determining the optimal course alteration manoeuvre for given ship domain model and multi-target encounter situation is solved. The solution consists of analytical formulas and numerical algorithms combined to achieve low computational complexity. Then this solution is further used to construct a method of planning ship trajectories, which are safe, economic and intuitive for navigators. Example scenarios and the resulting trajectories are also provided. All of the algorithms, formulas and their derivations in the text are presented explicitly, so that they could be directly applied in any collision avoidance system.