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In the realm of maritime transportation, autonomous vessel navigation in natural inland waterways faces persistent challenges due to unpredictable natural factors. Existing scheduling algorithms fall short in handling these uncertainties, compromising both safety and efficiency. Moreover, these algorithms are primarily designed for nonautonomous vessels, leading to labor-intensive operations vulnerable to human error. To address these issues, this study proposes a risk-aware motion control approach for vessels that accounts for the dynamic and uncertain nature of tide islands in a distributionally robust manner. Specifically, a model predictive control (MPC) method is employed to follow the reference trajectory in the time–space map while incorporating a risk constraint to prevent grounding accidents. To address uncertainties in tide islands, a novel modeling technique represents them as stochastic polytopes …