Warpath ASV – situational awareness for autonomous surface vessels

In order to operate in a complex and unpredictable environment, autonomous surface vessels (ASVs) must be able to generate their own situational awareness (SA). Here we present Warpath ASV, a ASV-tailored specialization of FFI’s generic situational awareness framework for autonomous platforms. It implements the situational awareness capabilities deployed on the two ASVs Odin and Frigg. With radar and lidar as its primary sensors, Warpath ASV can automatically produce occupancy maps, track objects of interest, and conduct geographical self-localization in environments where global navigation satellite system are unavailable (GNSS-denied environments) by fusing measurements across sensors and over time. The resulting situational picture is used for automatic collision avoidance, close formation maneuvers, and general situational awareness for operators. In 2023, the development of Warpath ASV has focused on maturation over adding new features. This report documents current capabilities in Warpath ASV, provides an overview of key experiments since 2016, summarizes lessons learned, and points the way forward for future research.