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dr hab. inż. Rafał Szłapczyński
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- Associate professor at Institute of Ocean Engineering and Ship Technology
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total: 71
Catalog Publications
Year 2025
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Declarative ship arenas under favourable conditions
PublicationAccording to maritime regulations, a collision-avoidance action shall be taken at an “ample time” while strict interpretation of this term is ambiguous. Evasive manoeuvres, executed by marine navigators on a daily basis, are usually carried out well in advance, while the distance at which they decide to perform such a manoeuvre is mostly subjective and results, e.g., from the navigator's seagoing experience. A proper understanding...
Year 2024
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A Machine Learning Approach for Estimating Overtime Allocation in Software Development Projects
PublicationOvertime planning in software projects has traditionally been approached with search-based multi-objective optimization algorithms. However, the explicit solutions produced by these algorithms often lack applicability and acceptance in the software industry due to their disregard for project managers' intuitive knowledge. This study presents a machine learning model that learns the preferred overtime allocation patterns from solutions...
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Holistic collision avoidance decision support system for watchkeeping deck officers
PublicationThe paper presents a 3-stage synthesis-based Decision Support System for watchkeeping deck officers. Its functional scope covers conflict detection, maneuver selection, and maneuver execution, all phases supplemented by collision alerts. First, a customized elliptic ship domain is used for checking if both OS and TS will have enough free space. A survey-based navigators’ declarative OS arena is then used to determine the time at...
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Impact of trajectory simplification methods on modeling carbon dioxide emissions from ships
PublicationModels of ship fuel consumption and emissions play an essential role in estimating global shipping’s greenhouse gas emissions. They are also widely used for verification of reported CO2 emissions for systems like EU MRV (Monitoring, Reporting and Verification) or IMO DCS (Data Collection System). Such models achieve high accuracy using historical spatiotemporal information about each ship from AIS data. However, this approach requires substantial...
Year 2023
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Collision Risk-Informed Weather Routing for Sailboats
PublicationSelected COLREG rules, good seamanship and sheer common sense indicate that it is in a sailboat's interest to follow collision-free routes without relying on large power-driven ships to give way. Until now, however, no method has integrated a sailboat's weather routing with collision risk monitoring and collision avoidance. Therefore, a new deterministic approach to combine the above features within one method is introduced here....
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Machine Learning Assisted Interactive Multi-objectives Optimization Framework: A Proposed Formulation and Method for Overtime Planning in Software Development Projects
PublicationMachine Learning Assisted Interactive Multi-objectives Optimization Framework: A Proposed Formulation and Method for Overtime Planning in Software Development Projects Hammed A. Mojeed & Rafal Szlapczynski Conference paper First Online: 14 September 2023 161 Accesses Part of the Lecture Notes in Computer Science book series (LNAI,volume 14125) Abstract Software development project requires proper planning to mitigate risk and...
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Parallel implementation of a Sailing Assistance Application in a Cloud Environment
PublicationSailboat weather routing is a highly complex problem in terms of both the computational time and memory. The reason for this is a large search resulting in a multitude of possible routes and a variety of user preferences. Analysing all possible routes is only feasible for small sailing regions, low-resolution maps, or sailboat movements on a grid. Therefore, various heuristic approaches are often applied, which can find solutions...
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Ship weather routing featuring w-MOEA/D and uncertainty handling
PublicationThe paper presents a new version of evolutionary multi-objective weather routing (WR) for ships taking into account uncertainties of weather forecasts in route optimization. The method applies authors’ w-MOEA/D algorithm: MOEA/D framework incorporating Decision Maker’s (DM) preferences by means of w-dominance relation. Owing to this, DM preferences are taken into account throughout optimization, allowing the process to focus on...
Year 2022
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Bridge Ergonomic Design: A Review
PublicationHuman error remains the most common cause of marine incidents and it is worth emphasizing that navigator’s performance is directly affected by ergonomic factors on the bridge. Studies regarding influence of bridge design and work environment on the operator are rare, thus the main purpose of this paper is to fill in this gap. Documents issued by recognized organizations, research publications and additional sources were reviewed...
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Weather Routing System Architecture Using Onboard Data Collection and Route Optimisation
PublicationThis paper describes the architecture of a weather routing system consisting of two key elements: onboard monitoring and route optimiser sub-systems. The former is responsible for collecting various onboard measurements, such as current ship position or ship motion variables. These data, when gathered and processed, are then used for fine-tuning a ship model. The model, together with weather forecasts, is utilised by a multi-objective...
Year 2021
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A ship domain-based model of collision risk for near-miss detection and Collision Alert Systems
PublicationThe paper presents a new model of ship collision risk, which utilises a ship domain concept and the related domain-based collision risk parameters. An encounter is here described by five variables representing: degree of domain violation (DDV), relative speed of the two vessels, combination of the vessels’ courses, arena violations and encounter complexity. As for the first three variables, their values can be directly computed...
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Robust-adaptive dynamic programming-based time-delay control of autonomous ships under stochastic disturbances using an actor-critic learning algorithm
PublicationThis paper proposes a hybrid robust-adaptive learning-based control scheme based on Approximate Dynamic Programming (ADP) for the tracking control of autonomous ship maneuvering. We adopt a Time-Delay Control (TDC) approach, which is known as a simple, practical, model free and roughly robust strategy, combined with an Actor-Critic Approximate Dynamic Programming (ACADP) algorithm as an adaptive part in the proposed hybrid control...
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W-dominance: Tradeoff-inspired dominance relation for preference-based evolutionary multi-objective optimization
PublicationThe paper presents a method of incorporating decision maker preferences into multi-objective meta-heuristics. It is based on tradeoffcoefficients and extends their applicability from bi-objective to multi-objective. The method assumes that a decision maker specifies a priori each objective’s importance as a weight interval. Based on this, w-dominance relation is introduced, which extends Pareto dominance. By replacing reference...
Year 2020
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EVOLUTIONARY MULTI–OBJECTIVE WEATHER ROUTING OF SAILBOATS
PublicationThe paper presents a multi-objective method, which optimises the route of a sailboat. The presented method makes use of an evolutionary multi-objective (EMO) algorithm, which performs the optimisation according to three objective functions: total passage time, a sum of all course alterations made during the voyage and the average angle of heel. The last two of the objective functions reflect the navigator’s and passenger’s comfort,...
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OPTIMISING RIG DESIGN FOR SAILING YACHTS WITH EVOLUTIONARY MULTIOBJECTIVE ALGORITHM
PublicationThe paper presents a framework for optimising a sailing yacht rig using Multi-objective Evolutionary Algorithms and for filtering obtained solutions by means of a Multi-criteria Decision Making method. A Bermuda sloop with discontinuous rig is taken under consideration as a model rig configuration. It has been decomposed into its elements and described by a set of control parameters to form a responsive model which can be used...
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Towards Improving Optimised Ship Weather Routing
PublicationThe aim of the paper is to outline a project focusing on the development of a new type of ship weather routing solution with improved uncertainty handling, through better estimation of ship performance and responses to sea conditions. Ensemble forecasting is considered to take into account the uncertainty levels that are typical of operations in a stochastic environment. Increased accuracy of weather prediction is achieved through...
Year 2019
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Framework of an Evolutionary Multi-Objective Optimisation Method for Planning a Safe Trajectory for a Marine Autonomous Surface Ship
PublicationThis paper represents the first stage of research into a multi-objective method of planning safe trajectories for marine autonomous surface ships (MASSs) involved in encounter situations. Our method applies an evolutionary multi-objective optimisation (EMO) approach to pursue three objectives: minimisation of the risk of collision, minimisation of fuel consumption due to collision avoidance manoeuvres, and minimisation of the extra...
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High performance super-twisting sliding mode control for a maritime autonomous surface ship (MASS) using ADP-Based adaptive gains and time delay estimation
PublicationThis research addresses two kinds of problems related to optimal trajectory tracking of a Maritime Autonomous Surface Ship (MASS): those caused by the time-varying external disturbances including winds, waves and ocean currents as well as those resulting from inherent dynamical uncertainties. As the paper shows, an accurate and robust optimal controller can successfully deal with both issues. An improved Optimal Adaptive Super-Twisting...
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Model Predictive Super-Twisting Sliding Mode Control for An Autonomous Surface Vehicle
PublicationThis paper presents a new robust Model Predictive Control (MPC) algorithm for trajectory tracking of an Autonomous Surface Vehicle (ASV) in presence of the time-varying external disturbances including winds, waves and ocean currents as well as dynamical uncertainties. For fulfilling the robustness property, a sliding mode control-based procedure for designing of MPC and a super-twisting term are adopted. The MPC algorithm has been...
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Preference-based evolutionary multi-objective optimization in ship weather routing
PublicationIn evolutionary multi-objective optimization (EMO) the aim is to find a set of Pareto-optimal solutions. Such approach may be applied to multiple real-life problems, including weather routing (WR) of ships. The route should be optimal in terms of passage time, fuel consumption and safety of crew and cargo while taking into account dynamically changing weather conditions. Additionally it must not violate any navigational constraints...
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REVIEW OF WEATHER FORECAST SERVICES FOR SHIP ROUTING PURPOSES
PublicationWeather data is nowadays used in a variety of navigational and ocean engineering research problems: from the obvious ones like voyage planning and routing of sea-going vessels, through the analysis of stability-related phenomena, to detailed modelling of ships’ manoeuvrability for collision avoidance purposes. Apart from that, weather forecasts are essential for passenger cruises and fishing vessels that want to avoid the risk...
Year 2018
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A Framework of A Ship Domain-Based Near-Miss Detection Method Using Mamdani Neuro-Fuzzy Classification
PublicationSafety analysis of navigation over a given area may cover application of various risk measures for ship collisions. One of them is percentage of the so called near- miss situations (potential collision situations). In this article a method of automatic detection of such situations based on the data from Automatic Identification System (AIS), is proposed. The method utilizes input parameters such as: collision risk measure based...
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A Ship Domain-Based Method of Determining Action Distances for Evasive Manoeuvres in Stand-On Situations
PublicationA ship encounter can be considered safe if neither of ships’ domains (defined areas around ships) is intruded by other ships. Published research on this includes optimising collision avoidancemanoeuvres fulfilling domain-based safety conditions.However, until recently there was no method, using ship’s domain to determine exact moment when a particular collision avoidance manoeuvre can still be successfully performed. The authors...
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Determining and visualizing safe motion parameters of a ship navigating in severe weather conditions
PublicationThe paper presents a method of determining, organizing and displaying ship collision avoidance information, which is based on the Collision Threat Parameters Area (CTPA) technique. The method makes it possible to visualize navigational threats as well as possible collision avoidance manoeuvres. The solution is focused on supporting navigation in severe weather conditions. Normally collision avoidance decisions are made taking into...
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Multi-objective weather routing of sailboats considering wave resistance
PublicationThe article presents a method to determine the route of a sailing vessel with the aid of deterministic algorithms. The method assumes that the area in which the route is to be determined is limited and the basic input data comprise the wind vector and the speed characteristic of the vessel. Compared to previous works of the authors, the present article additionally takes into account the effect of sea waves with the resultant resistance...
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Ship domain applied to determining distances for collision avoidance manoeuvres in give-way situations
PublicationShip domain is often used in marine navigation and marine traffic engineering as a safety condition. The basic idea behind those applications is that an encounter of two or more ships can be considered safe if neither of ship domains is intruded by other ships. Research utilising this approach has been documented in numerous works, including publications on optimising collision avoidance manoeuvres performed to fulfil domain-based...
Year 2017
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A Framework of a Ship Domain-based Collision Alert System
PublicationThe paper presents a framework of a planned ship collision alert system. The envisaged system is compliant with IMO Resolution MSC.252 (83) “Adoption of the revised performance standards for Integrated Navigation Systems (INS)”. It is based on a ship domain-oriented approach to collision risk and introduces a policy of alerts on dangerous situations. The alerts will include cautions, warnings and alarms, which will be triggered...
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A method of determining and visualizing safe motion parameters of a ship navigating in restricted waters
PublicationThe paper presents a method of displaying ship collision avoidance information which is based on an unconventional Collision Threat Parameters Area (CTPA) technique. The solution presented here extends CTPA's functionality from past works by supporting navigation in restricted waters and handling ship domains analytically instead of numerically. It visualizes potential navigational threats as well as possible collision avoidance...
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Heuristic Method of Safe Manoeuvre Selection Based on Collision Threat Parameters Areas
PublicationThis paper is a continuation of papers dedicated to a radar-based CTPA (Collision Threat Parameters Area) display designed to support safe manoeuvre selection. The display visualizes all the ships in an encounter and presents situational overview from the own ship’s point of view. It calculates and displays information on unsafe or unrealistic own ship’s course & speed allowing a user to select a safe manoeuvre. So far only the...
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Multi-objective weather routing of sailing vessels
PublicationThe paper presents a multi-objective deterministic method of weather routing for sailing vessels. Depending on a particular purpose of sailboat weather routing, the presented method makes it possible to customize the criteria and constraints so as to fit a particular user’s needs. Apart from a typical shortest time criterion, safety and comfort can also be taken into account. Additionally, the method supports dynamic weather data:...
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Review of ship safety domains: Models and applications
PublicationShip safety domain is a term which is widely used in research on collision avoidance and traffic engineering among others. Classic ship domains have been compared in multiple reports. However, up till now there has been no work summing up contemporary research in this field. The paper offers a systematic and critical review of the newer ship domain models and related research. It discusses multiple differences in approach to ship...
Year 2016
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An analysis of domain-based ship collision risk parameters
PublicationAccording to a lot of contemporary research on ship collision avoidance the classic approach parameters – distance at closest point of approach (DCPA) and time to the closest point of approach (TCPA) – are not sufficient for estimating ship collision risk and for planning evasive manoeuvres. Consequently new measures are introduced, often utilizing the concept of a ship domain. Their drawback, up to this point, was the lack of...
Year 2015
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A Simulative Comparison of Ship Domains and Their Polygonal Approximations
PublicationThe paper investigates the impact of a precise ship domain shape on the size of collision avoidance manoeuvres. The considered collision avoidance manoeuvres include both course and speed alterations. Various ship domains are compared with their polygonal approximations, which vary in the number of points of a domain contour and placement of these points. The best of all considered approximations is determined in the course of...
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A Target Information Display for Visualising Collision Avoidance Manoeuvres in Various Visibility Conditions
PublicationThe paper introduces a new approach to displaying information on targets. The proposed display visualises three types of information: targets’ motion parameters (typical for target tracking), combinations of own course and speed which collide with those targets (typical for Collision Threat Parameters Area display by Lenart (1983)) and combinations of own course and speed which are not compliant with COLREGS in this case (based...
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Evolutionary Planning of Safe Ship Tracks in Restricted Visibility
PublicationThe paper presents the continuation of the author's research on ship track planning by means of Evolutionary Algorithms (EA). The presented method uses EA to search for an optimal set of safe tracks for all ships involved in an encounter. Until now the method assumed good visibility – compliance with standard rules of the Convention on the International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea (COLREGS, 1972). However, in restricted...
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PLANOWANIE I WIZUALIZACJA BEZPIECZNYCH MANEWRÓW STATKÓW OPARTE NA ZMODYFIKOWANYM DIAGRAMIE COCKCROFTA
PublicationArtykuł przedstawia kontynuację badań autora nad planowaniem bezpiecznych trajektorii statków za pomocą algorytmów ewolucyjnych. Prezentowana metoda poszukuje optymalnego zbioru bezpiecznych trajektorii wszystkich statków biorących udział w spotkaniu. Bieżąca wersja metody zakłada ograniczoną widzialność i obowiązywanie Prawidła 19 Międzynarodowych Przepisów o Zapobieganiu Zderzeniom na Morzu (MPZZM) zamiast Prawideł 11 – 18. Uzupełnieniem...
Year 2014
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Evolutionary sets of safe ship trajectories with speed reduction manoeuvres within traffic separation schemes
PublicationIn the previous paper the author presented the evolutionary ship trajectory planning method designed to support Traffic Separation Schemes (TSS). This time the extensions of this method are described which allow to combine evolutionary trajectory planning with speed reduction manoeuvres. On TSS regions with higher than usual density of traffic and smaller distances between ships, the course alterations alone are not always sufficient...
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Ewolucyjne planowanie bezpiecznych trajektorii statków oparte na zmodyfikowanym diagramie Cockcrofta.
PublicationArtykuł przedstawia kontynuację badań autora nad planowaniem bezpiecznych trajektorii statków za pomocą algorytmów ewolucyjnych. Prezentowana metoda poszukuje optymalnego zbioru bezpiecznych trajektorii wszystkich statków biorących udział w spotkaniu. Bieżąca wersja metody zakłada ograniczoną widoczność i obowiązywanie Prawidła 19 Międzynarodowych Przepisów o Zapobieganiu Zderzeniom na Morzu (MPZZM) zamiast Prawideł 11 – 18. Artykuł...
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Koncepcja systemu wspomagania decyzji nawigatora statku opartego na ewolucyjnym planowaniu manewrów antykolizyjnych
PublicationArtykuł przedstawia koncepcję systemu wspomagania decyzji nawigatora statku opartego na wątkach badań prowadzonych wcześniej przez autora. System będzie rozszerzał funkcjonalność systemów dotychczasowych o możliwość szczegółowego planowania bezpiecznej trajektorii statku na wodach zamkniętych, z dużą liczbą statków obcych i ograniczeniami toru wodnego. Artykuł zawiera dyskusję możliwych podejść do planowania manewrów, optymalizacji...
Year 2013
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Evolutionary Ship Track Planning within Traffic Separation Schemes – Evaluation of Individuals
PublicationThe paper presents an extended version of the author’s Evolutionary Sets of Safe Ship Trajectories method. The method plans safe tracks of all ships involved in an encounter including speed reduction manoeuvres, if necessary, and taking into account Rule 10 of COLREGS, which specifies ships’ behaviour within Traffic Separation Schemes governed by IMO. The paper focuses on the evaluation phase of the evolutionary process and shows...
Year 2012
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Customized crossover in evolutionary sets of safe ship trajectories
PublicationThe paper presents selected aspects of evolutionary sets of safe ship trajectories-a method which applies evolutionary algorithms and some of the assumptions of game theory to solving ship encounter situations. For given positions and motion parameters of the ships, the method finds a near optimal set of safe trajectories of all ships involved in an encounter. The method works in real time and the solutions must be returned within...
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Evolutionary approach to ship's trajectory planning within Traffic Separation Schemes
PublicationThe paper presents the continuation of the author's research on evolutionary approach to ship trajectory planning. While the general problem of the evolutionary trajectory planning has already been solved, no one has yet touched one of its specific aspects: evolutionary trajectory planning within Traffic Separation Schemes. Traffic Separation Scheme (TSS) is a traffic-management route-system complying with rules of the International...
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Evolutionary Sets of Safe Ship Trajectories: Evaluation of Individuals
PublicationThe paper presents a description of the evaluation phase of the Evolutionary Sets of Safe Ship Trajectories method. In general, the Evolutionary Sets of Safe Ship Trajectories method combines some of the assumptions of game theory with evolutionary programming and finds an optimal set of cooperating trajectories of all ships involved in an encounter situation. While developing a new version of this method, the authors decided to...
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Evolutionary Sets of Safe Ship Trajectories Within Traffic Separation Schemes
PublicationThe paper presents the continuation of the author's research on Evolutionary Sets of Safe Ship Trajectories (ESoSST) methodology. In an earlier paper (Szlapczynski, 2011) the author described the foundations of this methodology, which used Evolutionary Algorithms (EA) to search for an optimal set of safe trajectories for all the ships involved in an encounter. The methodology was originally designed for open waters or restricted...
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On evolutionary computing in multi-ship trajectory planning, Applied Intelligence
PublicationThe paper presents the updated version of Evolutionary Sets of Safe Ship Trajectories: a method which applies evolutionary algorithms and some of the assumptions of game theory to solving ship encounter situations. For given positions and motion parameters of the ships,the method finds a near optimal set of safe trajectories of all ships involved in an encounter. The method works in real time and the solutions must be returned...
Year 2011
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COLREGS compliance in Evolutionary Sets of Cooperating Ship Trajectories
PublicationIn general, Evolutionary Sets of Cooperating Ship Trajectories combine some of the assumptions of game theory with evolutionary programming and aim to find optimal set of cooperating trajectoriesof all ships involved in an encounter situation. In a two-ship encounter situation the method enables the operator of an on-board collision-avoidance system to predict the most probable behaviour of atarget and to plan the own manoeuvres...
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Evolutionary Sets Of Safe Ship Trajectories: A New Approach To Collision Avoidance
PublicationThe paper introduces a new method of solving multi-ship encounter situations for both open waters and restricted water regions. The method, called evolutionary sets of safe trajectories combines some of the assumptions of game theory with evolutionary programming and aims to find optimal set of safe trajectories of all ships involved in an encounter situation. In a two-ship encounter situation it enables the operator of an on-board...
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Evolutionary Sets of Safe Ship Trajectories: Evaluation of Individuals
PublicationThe paper presents a description of the evaluation phase of the Evolutionary Sets of Safe Ship Trajectories method. In general, the Evolutionary Sets of Safe Ship Trajectories method combines some of the assumptions of game theory with evolutionary programming and finds an optimal set of cooperating trajectories of all ships involved in an encounter situation. While developing a new version of this method, the au-thors decided...
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Evolutionary Sets of Safe Ship Trajectories: improving the method by adjusting evolutionary techniques and parameters
PublicationThe paper presents some of the evolutionary techniques used by the evolutionary sets of safe ship trajectories method. In general, this method utilizes a customized evolutionary algorithm to solve a constrained optimization problem. This problem is defined as finding a set of cooperating trajectories (here the set is an evolutionary individual) of all the ships involved in the encounter situation. The resulting trajectories are...
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Evolutionary Sets of Safe Ship Trajectories: problem dedicated operators
PublicationThe paper presents the optimization process of the evolutionary sets of safe ship trajectories method, with a focus on its problem-dedicated operators. The method utilizes a customized evolutionary algorithm to solve a constrained optimization problem. This problem is defined as finding a set of cooperating trajectories (a set is an evolutionary individual) of all the ships involved in the encounter situation. The resulting trajectories...
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