Deep Learning for Vessel Trajectory Prediction Using Clustered AIS Data

Accurate vessel track prediction is key for maritime traffic control and management. Accurate prediction results can enable collision avoidance, in addition to being suitable for planning routes in advance, shortening the sailing distance, and improving navigation efficiency. Vessel track prediction using automatic identification system (AIS) data has attracted extensive attention in the maritime traffic community. In this study, a combining density-based spatial clustering of applications with noise (DBSCAN)-based long short-term memory (LSTM) model (denoted as DLSTM) was developed for vessel prediction. DBSCAN was used to cluster vessel tracks, and LSTM was then used for training and prediction. The performance of the DLSTM model was compared with that of support vector regression, recurrent neural network, and conventional LSTM models. The results revealed that the proposed DLSTM model outperformed these models by approximately 2–8%. The proposed model is able to provide a better prediction performance of vessel tracks, which can subsequently improve the efficiency and safety of maritime traffic control.