An automatic collision avoidance algorithm for multiple marine surface vehicles

In recent years, unmanned surface vehicles have been widely used in various applications from military to civil domains. Seaports are crowded and ship accidents have increased. Thus, collision accidents occur frequently mainly due to human errors even though international regulations for preventing collisions at seas (COLREGs) have been established. In this paper, we propose a real-time obstacle avoidance algorithm for multiple autonomous surface vehicles based on constrained convex optimization. The proposed method is simple and fast in its implementation, and the solution converges to the optimal decision. The algorithm is combined with the PD-feedback linearization controller to track the generated path and to reach the target safely. Forces and azimuth angles are efficiently distributed using a control allocation technique. To show the effectiveness of the proposed collision-free path-planning algorithm, numerical simulations are performed.