A New Method for AUV’s Homing Path Planning

Abstract

Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) and Remotely Operated Vehicles (ROVs) are useful for many underwater operations such as collecting biological and mineral resources; however there are some limitations for those vehicles during long-term operations. Although studies have been made of AUVs over the past thirty years, still AUV technology limitations remain. Due to the current state of computational capability and data storage capacity, the technology can marginally provide fair speed and efficiency including well-established software developments. Energy storage and power consumptions are critical factors for all long-term operations. In the long-term underwater application, docking operation is important for recharging power and transferring data which are limited by the onboard energy storage and on-board data storage. The general problem of accurately stabilizing the position and orientation of the underwater vehicle is a key problem of homing path planning. In this paper, we propose the Virtual Goal Method based on AUV’s bounded turning radius and tangent points. Simulation result shows that this planner is very fast and guaranteed the AUV’s homing orientation and position.