Utilization of AI Technology for Collision Avoidance of Fishing Vessels

Abstract

Most of marine accidents are caused by human errors, and hence the prevention of marine accidents is essentially difficult as long as ships are operated by human beings. In addition, further congestion of seaborne routes and harbors is apprehended, and also it will be seriously difficult to secure required number of seafarers in near future in Japan. Therefore automation of ship navigation is an urgent issue in marine transportation. As the automatic collision avoidance is a key technology for realizing autonomous ships, various algorithms and approaches related to hazard detection and maneuver for collision avoidance have been studied nowadays. In this report, we try to demonstrate the potential of automatic ship handling by AI （Artificial Intelligence）through comparisons with that by a conventional geometric model as well as a dedicated experiment using three self-propelled ship models.