Collaborative Search and Target Capture of AUV Formations in Obstacle Environments

Abstract

When performing cooperative search operations underwater, multi-autonomous underwater vehicles formations may encounter array-type obstacles such as gullies and bumps. To safely traverse the obstacle domain, this paper balances convergence time, transformation distance and sensor network power consumption, and proposes a Formation Comprehensive Cost (FCC) model to achieve collision avoidance of the formations. The FCC model is used instead of the fitness function of the genetic algorithm to solve the assignment of capture positions and the improved neural self-organizing map (INSOM) algorithm is proposed to achieve efficient path-planning during the capture process. The simulation experiments in 3D space verify that the proposed scheme can improve the efficiency of robot deployment while ensuring safety.

Keywords

• multi-AUV formation
• dynamic formation transformation
• task assignment
• path planning
• target capture