Traffic Generator

The tool generates a structured set of encounters for verifying automatic collision and grounding avoidance systems. Based on input parameters such as desired situation, relative speed, relative bearing etc, the tool will generate a set of traffic situations. The traffic situations may be written to files and/or inspected using plots.

A paper is written describing the background for the tool and how it works [paper]

Installation

To install Ship Traffic Generator, run this command in your terminal:

pip install trafficgen

This is the preferred method to install Traffic Generator, as it will always install the most recent stable release.

You can check your installation by running:

uv run trafficgen --help

See documentation for usage of the Ship Traffic Generator.

Development Setup

Install UV

This project uses uv as package manager. If you haven't already, install uv, preferably using it's "Standalone installer" method:
..on Windows:

powershell -ExecutionPolicy ByPass -c "irm https://astral.sh/uv/install.ps1 | iex"

..on MacOS and Linux:

curl -LsSf https://astral.sh/uv/install.sh | sh

(see docs.astral.sh/uv for all / alternative installation methods.)

Once installed, you can update uv to its latest version, anytime, by running:

uv self update

Install Python

The traffic generator requires Python 3.11 or later.

If you don't already have a compatible version installed on your machine, you way install Python through uv:

uv python install

This will install the latest stable version of Python into the uv Python directory, i.e. as a uv-managed version of Python.

Alternatively, and if you want a standalone version of Python on your machine, you can install Python either via winget:

winget install --id Python.Python

or you can download and install Python from the python.org website.

Clone the repository

Clone the traffig generator repository into your local development directory:

git clone https://github.com/dnv-opensource/ship-traffic-generator path/to/your/dir/ship-traffic-generator

Change into the project directory after cloning:

cd ship-traffic-generator

Install dependencies

Run uv sync to create a virtual environment and install all project dependencies into it:

uv sync

Note: Using --no-dev will omit installing development dependencies.

Note: uv will create a new virtual environment called .venv in the project root directory when running uv sync the first time. Optionally, you can create your own virtual environment using e.g. uv venv, before running uv sync.

(Optional) Activate the virtual environment

When using uv, there is in almost all cases no longer a need to manually activate the virtual environment.
uv will find the .venv virtual environment in the working directory or any parent directory, and activate it on the fly whenever you run a command via uv inside your project folder structure:

uv run <command>

However, you still can manually activate the virtual environment if needed. When developing in an IDE, for instance, this can in some cases be necessary depending on your IDE settings. To manually activate the virtual environment, run one of the "known" legacy commands:
..on Windows:

.venv\Scripts\activate.bat

..on Linux:

source .venv/bin/activate

Documentation

To generate documentation use:

uv run docs/make.bat html

The html documentation will then be available in docs/build/html/index.html