With the development of terrestrial networks and satellite constellations, vessel movement information can be effectively collected based on Automatic Identification System (AIS) receivers. Vessel motion pattern classification using AIS plays an important role in maritime monitoring and management. However, classifying vast amounts of vessel motion information is prohibitive workload. The aim of this study is to develop effective methods that can aid in automatic vessel motion pattern classification in inland waterways. First, the Least-squares Cubic Spline Curves Approximation (LCSCA) technique is used to represent the vessel motion trajectory. Then, a traditional classification model based on Lp-norm (0 < p < 1) sparse representation is improved to classify vessel motion patterns. And a Matching Pursuit - Fletcher Reeves (MPFR) method is developed to find the sparse solutions of the proposed model. To validate the performance of the proposed model, two AIS datasets from the Yangtze River are collected and applied in our experiment. According to the results, we can know that the proposed model can effectively classify vessel motion pattern in inland waterways. And the effectiveness of the proposed model is superior to those of other representative classification methods.@en