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This paper describes how different motion sensors can be integrated and fused to obtain necessary navigational requirements needed for autonomous operations. Both autonomous coastal navigation and automatic docking operations are analysed with respect to trade-offs in position and velocity accuracies, integrity, availability and continuity. By using AIS measurements from typical docking operations for the Norwegian coastal express vessels it is possible to define feasible safe trajectories for the docking operations. Justified requirements can be obtained using closed-loop analysis for the specific vessel and its operation. Both vessel and passenger safety can be related to vessels horizontal velocity and the safe velocity concept has been introduced to derive requirements for integrity, availability, alarm limit and continuity in case of unreported/unhandled errors in the navigation system. The outcome of this study is a design tool, or a generic methodology for selecting the most promising combination of the integrated sensor components to obtain necessary navigation system performance for safe autonomous navigation.

The objective of this paper is to describe a protocol for exchange of navigational data between ships operating in close proximity. The protocol supports the exchange of data needed for relative positioning and includes geometry data of the objects involved in the operation in addition to inertial and positional data. The protocol takes into account the variable and limited communication capabilities that may be available for maritime operations. The paper describes one use case where two ships perform a simultaneous operation and another use case where a ship broadcasts its intended route. A S-100 Application Schema covering the required data is presented. Examples of the message exchange and bandwidth requirements are given. The resulting protocol will be useful for autonomous systems and ships that need standardized exchange of data to support situational awareness during their passage. The paper is written as part of the H2H project [1] which is developing an open system architecture to ensure interoperability between different vendors of autonomous systems when it comes to the data exchange related to position and geometry data.

This paper presents a public API proposed for autonomous maritime operations where several moving and fixed objects are involved using wireless communication solutions. The API ensures that high-level data can be exchanged without knowing details of the underlaying implementation. The data will be available for 3rd party vendors to connect their applications and equipment to the proposed framework for data exchange. The high-level data covers information about the object’s geometry, the object’s uncertainty zone (position uncertainty zone), sensor data, communication solutions and different operational zones (restrictions) dependent on the actual operation and its states. A common data model defining the necessary data, its meaning and their relationships are needed to ensure correct usage of the data across applications and equipment from several vendors. In addition, required functions and services are defined based on the Hull-to-Hull pilot system developed in the Horizon 2020 project “Hull-to-Hull”. The paper also presents a chat application that transmitts small messages between several ships by using the defined services and data formats.