Motion planning in marine control systems

In this chapter we review motion planning algorithms for ships, rigs, and autonomous marine vehicles. Motion planning includes path and trajectory generation, and it goes from optimized route planning (off-line long-range path generation through operating research methods) to reactive on-line trajectory reference generation, as given by the guidance system. Crucial to the marine systems case is the presence of environmental external forces (sea state, currents, winds) that drive the optimized motion generation process.