3D Cubic Bezier Curves for Multi-target Path Planning for Autonomous Underwater Vehicles
Qingyang Li · OCEANS 2019 - Marseille · 2019
This paper presents a new method to design the shortest smooth 3D path for multiple Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) to visit multiple targets. This path planning method can be separated into the target assignment problem and path designing problem. For the target assignment problem, we compare the genetic algorithm and ant colony optimization algorithm to get target sequence for each AUV with less distance cost. For the given target sequence for each AUVs, the path designing problem is to design shortest smooth path for visiting each target with constraint of G1continuity. This paper designs 3D Bezier curves by selecting the control points along the incoming and out-going heading direction. Each two-target segment has a set of discrete in-coming and out-going heading direction. For multi-target path planning, the in-coming heading direction and the out-going heading direction at each target have to be the same and the shortest path is selected via back propagation algorithm. It is proved that the combined 3D cubic Bezier curves ensure G1continuity along the entire multi-target path. Back propagation algorithm is applied to find the shortest curve sequence for multiple targets.