collision avoidance

safe ship

weather routing

ship domain

potential field

surface vehicles

automatic collision

surface vehicle

autonomous surface

Ocean Engineering

Unmanned maritime systems are evolving in a rapidly changing environment. Although the regulation and international law processes are still in progress, there are numerous research attempts regarding autonomous maritime vehicle path planning particularly. In contrast to ground and air autonomous path planning, ship path planning has numerous pitfalls such as safety, complexity and environmental dynamics that hinder the emergence of reliable autonomous systems. This review explores the path planning algorithms of autonomous maritime vehicles and their collision regulation relevance in order to reveal how the research community handles this issue. Our relevant findings point out that there are still many traffic rules to be dealt by path planning algorithms. Algorithms that can be calibrated in terms of safe distance, safe speed and etc. may be deemed more compliant after regulation amendments. • The path planning algorithms in maritime domain differs both in parameter selection and avoidance action. • The COLREG relevance of autonomous navigation may be insufficient for safe and collaborative navigation. • While APF is mostly employed path planning algorithm, velocity obstacle algorithm has the highest COLREG relevance.

A review of path planning algorithms in maritime autonomous surface ships: Navigation safety perspective