TrAISformer-A generative transformer for AIS trajectory prediction

Modelling trajectory in general, and vessel trajectory in particular, is a difficult task because of the multimodal and complex nature of motion data. In this paper, we present TrAISformer-a novel deep learning architecture that can forecast vessel positions using AIS (Automatic Identification System) observations. We address the multimodality by introducing a discrete representation of AIS data and re-frame the prediction, which is originally a regression problem, as a classification problem. The model encodes complex movement patterns in AIS data in high-dimensional vectors, then applies a transformer to extract useful long-term correlations from sequences of those embeddings to sample future vessel positions. Experimental results on real, public AIS data demonstrate that TrAISformer significantly outperforms state-of-the-art methods.