Development of an autonomous surface vehicle with preliminary field tests for collision-free navigation

This paper presents the development and testing of an ASV (Autonomous Surface Vehicle) platform, as well as a collision-free path planning approach, for performing various tasks in maritime environments. The ASV is developed on a catamaran-type hull with integrated systems for navigation and control, electrical power and propulsion, sensing, onboard computing, and wireless communication. In addition, navigation algorithms for improving autonomous capabilities are also implemented on the ASV hardware. More specifically, in order to achieve reliable, collision-free maneuvering between the vehicle and an object, a collision probability is evaluated by considering their respective position uncertainties, which are estimated by a tracking filter based on the extended Kalman filter. Using this concept, a collision-free path planning approach is proposed, which takes into account the dynamic characteristics of the vehicle. To demonstrate the performance and practical feasibility of the developed ASV and the implemented algorithms, preliminary field tests were carried out in an inland water environment, and its results are discussed. © ICROS 2020.