To improve the safety of ship navigation in complex sea areas and reduce planning time while achieving optimal path planning. The paper proposes an improved A* algorithm that incorporates ship collision risk assessment. The paper utilizes multi-scale raster maps to divide the sea chart in the context of complex sea areas, and combines the Line-of-sight (LOS) algorithm to solve the zigzag paths that may appear in this planning context. Moreover, in order to improve the efficiency of optimal path planning in the context of complex sea areas while ensuring path safety, the paper proposes a collision risk function to optimize the determination of the cost of A* algorithm nodes, thereby enhancing the heuristic function of the A* algorithm. The improved A* algorithm can consider both path length and collision risk to plan the optimal path and to enhance the overall quality of the planning results. To verify the advantages of the improved algorithm proposed in the paper, the Zhoushan Islands sea area with complex environment is selected as the planning background for simulation study. The results show that the improved algorithm with the introduction of the collision risk function reduces the path planning time, the number of expanded nodes, and the path length by 30%, 11%, and 5.8%, respectively, compared with the original algorithm, which can effectively reduce the computational burden of the algorithm. This study provides a relatively complete and scientific route planning strategy for the study of the safe navigation of smart ships in complex sea areas.

In order to solve the problem of the dynamic positioning control of large ships in rough sea and to meet the need for fixed-point operations, this paper proposes a dynamic positioning controller that can effectively achieve large ships’ fixed-point control during Level 9 sea states (wind force Beaufort No. 10). To achieve a better control effect, a large ship’s forward motion is decoupled to establish a mathematical model of the headwind stationary state. Meanwhile, the closed-loop gain shaping algorithm is combined with the exact feedback linearization algorithm to design the speed controller and the course-keeping controller. This effectively solves the problem of strong external interferences impacting the control system in rough seas and guarantees the comprehensive index of robustness performance. In this paper, three large ships—the “Mariner”, “Taian kou”, and “Galaxy”—are selected as the research objects for simulation research and the final fixing error is less than 10 m. It is proven that the method is safe, feasible, practical, and effective, and provides technical support for the design and development of intelligent marine equipment for use in rough seas.

To address the issues of path tracking accuracy and control stability in autonomous ship berthing, an improved algorithm combining nonlinear model predictive control (NMPC) and convolutional neural networks (CNNs) is proposed in this paper. A CNN is employed to train on a large dataset of ship berthing trajectories, combined with the rolling optimization mechanism of NMPC. A high-precision path tracking control method is designed, which accounts for ship motion constraints and environmental disturbances. Simulation results show an 88.24% improvement in tracking precision over traditional MPC. This paper proposes an improved nonlinear model predictive control (NMPC) strategy for autonomous ship berthing. By integrating convolutional neural networks (CNNs) and moving horizon estimation (MHE), the method enhances robustness and path-tracking accuracy under environmental disturbances. The amount of system overshoot is reduced, and the anti-interference capability is notably improved. The effectiveness, generalization, and applicability of the proposed algorithm are verified.

Due to the rapid development of a global navigation satellite system and the rapid growth of ships, the traditional control algorithms are not suitable; hence, the longitudinal rocking phenomenon generated by external disturbances is more serious when a ship is sailing. This paper takes a mathematical model of the super large oil tanker “KVLCC2”’s longitudinal motion as the controlled plant, establishing a multi-input multi-output instability control system, using the root trajectory shaping method and a weighting matrix to ensure the stability of its transfer function’s mathematical model. An improved closed-loop gain-shaping algorithm is utilized to design a simple robust controller. And a dual nonlinear positive feedback control algorithm is added to the control system to further improve the controller’s pitching stabilization performance and reduce the controller’s output energy. In order to verify that the controller has a consistently strong robustness, simulation experiments are carried out by adding a level 6, 7 and 8 wind wave model and a perturbation link to the control system, respectively. The results show that when the value of the hysteresis constant is taken as 0.25, the output values of the heave displacement and the pitch angle are greatly reduced, and the longitudinal rocking phenomenon is significantly improved. The dual nonlinear positive feedback control algorithm enhances the ship’s pitching stabilization control capability and further reduces the controller’s output energy, which provides technical support for the smooth and efficient sailing of super large ships under changing sea conditions. Combined with a global navigation satellite system, this algorithm provides a new method for pitching stabilization control of super large ships.

For the ship motion with large inertia coupled system identification modeling inaccuracy, the ship scale effect and the existence of partial unmeasured ship data problems. In this paper, an auxiliary model nonlinear innovation least squares identification algorithm is proposed. The new algorithm uses the output of the auxiliary model instead of the unmeasurable variables in the full-scale test data of the ship, and optimizes the error using the tangent function. Compared with the existing algorithm, the error of the improved algorithm decreases with the increase of time and continuously approaches to zero, which greatly improves the identification accuracy and convergence efficiency. The results show that the improved algorithm has significant identification accuracy and reliability. The identification method designed in this paper can be applied to the field of ship intelligent navigation engineering.