A Method for Automatically Selecting Aids to Navigation Based on their Spatial Influence Domains

To address the limitations of manually selecting aids to navigation (AtNs) on charts, a method for automatically selecting AtNs based on their spatial influence domains (SIDs) is proposed. First, the associations between the spatial attributes of an AtN are analyzed. Second, an SID of the AtN is defined, and a model of the SID is constructed based on the associations between the spatial attributes. Third, the importance of the location of the AtN is weighted based on the SID model. Fourth, an algorithm to automatically select AtNs based on the maximum coverage of the SIDS of preselected AtNs is developed. Finally, several AtNs are selected automatically using the algorithm. The experimental results demonstrate that (1) the proposed method can automatically select AtNs and the results comply with the requirements; (2) the automatic selection can eliminate the human-induced errors or the inconsistent results of manual selections from different operators; and (3) the efficiency of the proposed method is higher than that of current manual methods.