Towards Guaranteed Collision Avoidance for Multiple Autonomous Underactuated Unmanned Surface Vehicles in Restricted Waters

Erick J. Rodríguez-Seda

2025

Abstract

As autonomous surface vessels increasingly operate in restricted and congested waters, the need for distributed, reactive collision avoidance algorithms becomes more crucial. Traditional avoidance control algorithms are typically conservative, opting for a worst-case scenario approach and restricting the total area where Unmanned Surface Vehicles (USVs) can navigate. This paper presents a distributed collision avoidance framework for USVs, based on the concepts of Artificial Potential Field (APF) and avoidance functions, that aims to reduce the minimum safe distance that vehicles need to keep from obstacles by explicitly considering their shape, relative position, and relative orientation. The proposed control framework is theoretically demonstrated and validated through simulations to ensure collision avoidance at all times and to facilitate the travel of vehicles in obstacle-dense environments.

Paper Citation

in Harvard Style

Rodríguez-Seda E. (2025). Towards Guaranteed Collision Avoidance for Multiple Autonomous Underactuated Unmanned Surface Vehicles in Restricted Waters. In Proceedings of the 22nd International Conference on Informatics in Control, Automation and Robotics - Volume 2: ICINCO; ISBN 978-989-758-770-2, SciTePress, pages 53-59. DOI: 10.5220/0013678700003982

in Bibtex Style

@conference{icinco25,
author={Erick Rodríguez-Seda},
title={Towards Guaranteed Collision Avoidance for Multiple Autonomous Underactuated Unmanned Surface Vehicles in Restricted Waters},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 22nd International Conference on Informatics in Control, Automation and Robotics - Volume 2: ICINCO},
year={2025},
pages={53-59},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0013678700003982},
isbn={978-989-758-770-2},
}

in EndNote Style

TY - CONF

JO - Proceedings of the 22nd International Conference on Informatics in Control, Automation and Robotics - Volume 2: ICINCO
TI - Towards Guaranteed Collision Avoidance for Multiple Autonomous Underactuated Unmanned Surface Vehicles in Restricted Waters
SN - 978-989-758-770-2
AU - Rodríguez-Seda E.
PY - 2025
SP - 53
EP - 59
DO - 10.5220/0013678700003982
PB - SciTePress