346 
stacles (all typical for evolutionary method), with 
taking into account the changes of motion parame-
ters (changing strategies of the players involved in a 
game). Instead of finding the optimal own trajectory 
(from the own ship’s perspective) for the unchanged 
courses and speeds of targets, an optimal set of safe 
trajectories of all ships involved is searched for 
(from the coast, e.g. VTS, perspective). The method 
is called evolutionary sets of safe trajectories and its 
early version has been presented by one of the au-
thors in (Szlapczynski 2010). 
The newly developed version of the method uses 
real maps instead of simplified polygon modelling 
and focuses on COLREGS compliance. The upgrade 
to the method enforced changes in all phases of the 
evolutionary process including evaluation. The pa-
per presents a description and a discussion of the 
new evaluation phase.  
The rest of the paper is organized as follows. In 
the next section a brief description of the problem is 
given, including basic constraints of the optimization 
problem as well as the additional constraints -  the 
COLREGS rules, which are taken into account. Sec-
tion 3 covers the issue of detecting various con-
straints violations. This is followed by a Section 4, 
where it is shown, how, on the basis of previous sec-
tions, the fitness function is formulated. In section 5 
different evaluation approaches and the consequenc-
es of applying them are compared by means of simu-
lation experiments. Finally the summary and conclu-
sions are given in Section 6. 
2  SOLVING MULTI-SHIP ENCOUNTER 
SITUATIONS AS AN OPTIMIZATION 
PROBLEM 
It is assumed that we are given the following data:  
−  stationary constraints (such as landmasses and 
other obstacles), 
−  positions, courses and speeds of all ships in-
volved,  
−  ship domains,  
−  times necessary for accepting and executing the 
proposed manoeuvres. 
Ship positions and ship motion parameters are 
provided by ARPA (Automatic Radar Plotting Aid), 
or, if there is no reliable identification assured, AIS 
(Automatic Identification System) systems. A ship 
domain can be determined based on the ship’s 
length, its motion parameters and the type of water 
region. Since the shape of a domain is dependent on 
the type of water region, the authors have  assumed 
and used a ship domain model by Davis (Davis et al. 
1982), which updated Goodwin model (Goodwin 
1975), for open waters and to use a ship domain 
model by Coldwell (Coldwell 1982), which updated 
Fuji model (Fuji et al. 1971), for restricted waters. 
As for the last parameter – the necessary time, it 
is computed on the basis of navigational decision 
time and the ship’s manoeuvring abilities. By default 
an assumed 6-minute value is used here. 
Knowing all the abovementioned parameters, the 
goal is to find a set of trajectories, which minimizes 
the average way loss spent on manoeuvring, while 
fulfilling the following conditions: 
−  none of the stationary constraints are violated, 
−  none of the ship domains are violated, 
−  the minimal acceptable course alteration is not 
lesser than 15 degrees (assumed to eliminate slow 
and insignificant turns), 
−  the maximal acceptable course alteration is not to 
be larger than assumed 60 degrees, 
−  speed alteration are not to be applied unless nec-
essary (collision cannot be avoided by course al-
teration up to 60 degrees), 
−  a ship manoeuvres, if and only if she is obliged 
to, 
−  it is assumed that manoeuvres to starboard are fa-
voured over manoeuvres to port board. 
The first two conditions are obvious: all obstacles 
have to be avoided and the ship domain is an area 
that should not be violated by definition. All the oth-
er conditions are either imposed by COLREGS 
(IMO 1977) and good marine practice or by the eco-
nomics. In particular, the course alterations lesser 
than 15 degrees might be misleading for the ARPA 
systems (and therefore may lead to collisions) and 
the course alterations larger than 60 degrees are not 
recommended due to efficiency reasons. Also, ships 
should only manoeuvre when necessary, since each 
manoeuvre of a ship makes it harder to track its mo-
tion parameters for the other ships ARPA systems 
(Wawruch 2002). Apart from these main constraints, 
additional constraints –  selected COLREGS rules 
have to be directly handled. 
The COLREGS rules, which are of interest here 
are: 
−  Rule 13 – overtaking: an overtaking vessel must 
keep well clear of the vessel being overtaken. 
−  Rule 14 -  head-on situations: when two power-
driven vessels are meeting head-on both must al-
ter course to starboard so that they pass on the 
port side of the other. 
−  Rule 15 -  crossing situations: when two power-
driven vessels are crossing, the vessel, which has 
the other on the starboard side must give way. 
−  Rule 16 - the give-way vessel: the give-way ves-
sel must take early and substantial action to keep 
well clear. 
−  Rule 17 - the stand-on vessel: the stand-on vessel 
may take action to avoid collision if it becomes