Autonomous Navigation Control and Collision Avoidance Decision-Making of an Under-Actuated ASV Based on Deep Reinforcement Learning

For efficient and safe navigation for an autonomous surface vehicle (ASV), this paper proposes an autonomous navigation behavior framework that integrates deep reinforcement learning (DRL) to achieve autonomous decision-making and low-level control actions in path following and collision avoidance. By controlling both the propeller speed and the rudder angle, the policy of each behavior pattern is trained with the soft actor–critic (SAC) algorithm. Moreover, a dynamic obstacle trajectory predictor based on the Kalman filter and the long short-term memory module is developed for obstacle avoidance. Simulations and physical experiments using an under-actuated very large crude carrier (VLCC) model indicate that our DRL-based method produces appreciable performance gains in ASV autonomous navigation under environmental disturbances, which enables forecasting of the expected state of a vessel over a future time and improves the operational efficiency of the navigation process.