Vessel trajectory classification via transfer learning with Deep Convolutional Neural Networks

The classification of vessel trajectories using Automatic Identification System (AIS) data is crucial for ensuring maritime safety and the efficient navigation of ships. The advent of deep learning has brought about more effective classification methods, utilizing Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN). However, existing CNN-based approaches primarily focus on either sailing or loitering movement patterns and struggle to capture valuable features and subtle differences between these patterns from input images. In response to these limitations, we firstly introduce a novel framework, Dense121-VMC, based on Deep Convolutional Neural Networks (DCNN) with transfer learning for simultaneous extraction and classification of both sailing and loitering trajectories. Our approach efficiently performs in extracting significant features from input images and in identifying subtle differences in each vessel’s trajectory. Additionally, transfer learning effectively reduces data requirements and addresses the issue of overfitting. Through extended experiments, we demonstrate the novelty of proposed Dense121-VMC framework, achieving notable contributions for vessel trajectory classification.