Acceptance criteria for collision avoidance of autonomous navigation systems in approval process

Although regulatory bodies are working to provide the industry with prescriptive rules for autonomous navigation, some aspects remain unclear, such as explicit quantitative performance criteria for real-life applications. Autonomous navigation encompassed many aspects, including connectivity, emergency response, situational awareness, and collision avoidance. This article focused on the safety of future autonomous ships’ navigation by addressing collision avoidance and situational awareness and proposing possible approaches to develop quantitative performance criteria. After evaluation radar capabilities in a simulated environment and gaining experience from internal trials, we propose some quantitative performance metric candidates to support regulatory discussions. These criteria could form the basis for risk assessment and regulatory approval processes for autonomous navigation systems.