Memorial University of Newfoundland

Purpose

The project aims to create a decision support tool to improve navigation operations in icy waters. The tool will support tactical navigation decisions to optimize routing in icy waters over a time horizon of a few hours to a few days. It can be used to support decision making at different levels of ship autonomy, whether it is to provide on-demand routing advice to the bridge team, to serve as a primary source of tactical decisions that the bridge team can implement, whether onboard or in a remote control center, or to act autonomously to navigate an optimal route from departure to destination. As the degree of autonomy increases, the more the proposed tool must be integrated into the overall navigation system. In the proposed work, the focus is on assisting the crew on board during the planning and execution of a trip.