Task Assignment and Path Planning for Multiple Autonomous Underwater Vehicles Using 3D Dubins Curves †

Abstract

This paper investigates the task assignment and path planning problem for multiple AUVs in three dimensional (3D) underwater wireless sensor networks where nonholonomic motion constraints of underwater AUVs in 3D space are considered. The multi-target task assignment and path planning problem is modeled by the Multiple Traveling Sales Person (MTSP) problem and the Genetic Algorithm (GA) is used to solve the MTSP problem with Euclidean distance as the cost function and the Tour Hop Balance (THB) or Tour Length Balance (TLB) constraints as the stop criterion. The resulting tour sequences are mapped to 2D Dubins curves in the X−Y plane, and then interpolated linearly to obtain the Z coordinates. We demonstrate that the linear interpolation fails to achieve G1 continuity in the 3D Dubins path for multiple targets. Therefore, the interpolated 3D Dubins curves are checked against the AUV dynamics constraint and the ones satisfying the constraint are accepted to finalize the 3D Dubins curve selection. Simulation results demonstrate that the integration of the 3D Dubins curve with the MTSP model is successful and effective for solving the 3D target assignment and path planning problem.

Multi-Target Strike Path Planning Based on Improved Decomposition Evolutionary Algorithm

“…In recent years, [4][5][6] proposed several modeling approaches that can plan flying paths connecting multiple target regions. The basic theory is to model the path planning problem as a traveling salesman problem (TSP) after the targets are chosen.…”

A Real-Time Reaction Obstacle Avoidance Algorithm for Autonomous Underwater Vehicles in Unknown Environments

“…Recently, the question of collision avoidance for AUVs has attracted much attention from the ocean engineering and control community due to the wide commercial and military applications of AUVs, such as submarine cable inspection, submarine petroleum pipeline checking, underwater topographic surveying, ocean resource detection and oil field exploitation [ 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 ].…”

Curvature Continuous and Bounded Path Planning for Fixed-Wing UAVs

“…The first category involves parameterizing the curvature by arc length using, for example, clothoids [21,22]. Clothoid pairs can provide the shortest curves for a given turn angle [27]. However, there is no closed-form expression for position along the path or its approximation.…”

“…Moreover, look-up tables are usually required, increasing the operational complexity. The second category can provide closed-form solutions, using, for example, B-splines, Bezier curves or spatial Pythagorean hodographs [23,24,25,27,28,29,30]. These curves are used for trajectory generation for both UAVs [23,24] and autonomous robots [25,28].…”