With an increasing interest in the deployment of unmanned surface vehicles (USVs) to support complex ocean operations, high-speed USVs (≥40 knots) have become an important option, especially in accomplishing demanding tasks such as coastal guarding. At present, there is a vast amount of studies focusing on the development of USVs' autonomous navigation systems, and the results of most of them have only been verified by simulations or demonstrations on low-speed experimental USVs (≤20 knots). It remains unclear how high-speed USVs would perform in real applications. In particular, when USVs are navigating at high-speed, reliable obstacle detections and robust motion control become increasingly difficult to achieve than in normal conditions. This paper therefore presents a new autonomous navigation system for high-speed USVs with the system software and hardware been designed on the basis for ensuring a safe and reliable operation. Within such a system, a collision avoidance algorithm based on velocity obstacle able to adjust the USV's heading and speed in real-time has been integrated. A local environment modelling method and a heading maintain method by considering Coast Guard International Regulations for Avoiding Collision at Sea are proposed to improve the reliability and stability of the system. The effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed system has been verified and validated by hardware-in-the-loop simulation tests and sea trials on a high-speed USV (“Tianxing No. 1”) in practical maritime environments. Results show that the autonomous navigation system adapts to the characteristics of high-speed USVs and can guide high-speed USVs (≥40 knots) in realising a safe autonomous navigation, which significantly improves the USV's autonomy level.

中文翻译：

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导航高速无人水面车辆：系统方法和验证

随着人们对部署无人水面飞行器（USV）以支持复杂的海洋作业的兴趣日益浓厚，高速USV（≥40节）已成为重要的选择，尤其是在完成诸如海岸警卫之类的高要求任务时。目前，针对无人飞行器自主导航系统的开发有大量研究，其中大多数结果仅通过对低速实验无人飞行器（≤20节）的模拟或演示得到了验证。尚不清楚高速USV在实际应用中的性能如何。特别地，当USV高速航行时，与正常情况相比，可靠的障碍物检测和鲁棒的运动控制变得越来越难以实现。因此，本文提出了一种用于高速USV的新型自主导航系统，其系统软件和硬件是在确保安全可靠运行的基础上设计的。在这样的系统中，已经集成了基于速度障碍的防撞算法，该算法能够实时调整USV的航向和速度。为了提高系统的可靠性和稳定性，提出了一种考虑了海岸警卫队国际海上避碰规则的局部环境建模方法和航向保持方法。该系统的有效性和效率已通过在实际海事环境中对高速无人飞行器（“天星1号”）进行的硬件在环仿真测试和海上试验得到了验证和验证。