  As the demand for transportation through waterways continues to rise, the
number of vessels plying the waters has correspondingly increased. This has
resulted in a greater number of accidents and collisions between ships, some of
which lead to significant loss of life and financial losses. Research has shown
that human error is a major factor responsible for such incidents. The maritime
industry is constantly exploring newer approaches to autonomy to mitigate this
issue. This study presents the use of novel Artificial Potential Fields (APFs)
to perform obstacle and collision avoidance in marine environments. This study
highlights the advantage of harmonic functions over traditional functions in
modeling potential fields. With a modification, the method is extended to
effectively avoid dynamic obstacles while adhering to COLREGs. Improved
performance is observed as compared to the traditional potential fields and
also against the popular velocity obstacle approach. A comprehensive
statistical analysis is also performed through Monte Carlo simulations in
different congested environments that emulate real traffic conditions to
demonstrate robustness of the approach.
