Hierarchical Two-Stage Framework for Environment-Aware Long-Horizon Vessel Trajectory Prediction
A novel hierarchical two-stage framework for long-horizon vessel trajectory prediction under real ocean conditions, combining coarse long-term and grid-aware short-term predictors with an environmental module. Achieves 25% improvement in ADE and 17% in FDE over state-of-the-art on Australian CTS data.
[2605.16442] Hierarchical Two-Stage Framework for Environment-Aware Long-Horizon Vessel Trajectory Prediction
[Submitted on 15 May 2026]
Title:Hierarchical Two-Stage Framework for Environment-Aware Long-Horizon Vessel Trajectory Prediction
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Abstract:Long-horizon vessel trajectory forecasting under real ocean conditions is critical for collision avoidance, traffic management, and route planning. However, achieving accurate predictions is challenging due to long-range temporal dependencies and dynamic environmental factors such as currents, wind, and waves. To address these issues, we propose a hierarchical two-stage framework that combines a coarse long-term predictor with a grid-aware short-term predictor through a hierarchical fusion mechanism. The short-term branch leverages a Spatio-Temporal Graph Transformer on discretized maritime cells to capture localized dynamics, while the long-term branch encodes overarching navigational intent. An integrated environmental module incorporates oceanographic parameters, including surface currents, wind vectors, and significant wave height, using cross-modal attention and feature-wise modulation for adaptive response to varying sea conditions. Additionally, a learnable Savitzky-Golay smoothing layer enhances temporal coherence in fused trajectories. We evaluate our approach on Australian Craft Tracking System (CTS) data from the North West region, aligned with Copernicus Marine Service products, using a 3-hour input and a 10-hour prediction horizon. Experimental results show that our framework outperforms the state-of-the-art by 25% in Average Displacement Error (ADE) and 17% in Final Displacement Error (FDE). Ablation studies further validate the contribution of each component.
Subjects:
Robotics (cs.RO); Artificial Intelligence (cs.AI); Machine Learning (cs.LG)
Cite as: arXiv:2605.16442 [cs.RO]
(or arXiv:2605.16442v1 [cs.RO] for this version)
https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2605.16442
arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration)
Submission history
From: Ganeshaaraj Gnanavel Mr. [view email] [v1] Fri, 15 May 2026 00:50:39 UTC (4,677 KB)
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