Research on Global Ship Path Planning Method Based on Improved Ant Colony Algorithm

To solve the global path planning problem of the ship in the static and dynamic environment, we propose an improved ant colony algorithm to plan the ship’s navigation path. We use the artificial potential field method to compute the force direction of the ship at the initial iteration stage. The attraction potential field function is modified to improve the iteration efficiency of the hybrid ant colony algorithm. We design the pseudo-random state transition rule and improve the convergence of the hybrid algorithm by strengthening the selection of good paths. When updating the pheromone, we consider the path’s length, safety, and smoothness to plan a safer navigation path. The simulation results show that the improved ant colony algorithm has a faster convergence speed than the original ant colony algorithm. The optimal solution quality is higher, which can realize global ship path planning in static and dynamic environments.