Obstacle Avoidance of Autonomous Underwater Vehicle by Using Streamline Function

Development of efficient and practical path-planning methods is a key issue for modern autonomous underwater vehicles (AUV). This paper describes a streamline function based obstacle avoidance path planning method for autonomous underwater vehicle. The specific requirement of the underwater world, AUV manoeuvrability, and constrained view of sonar were considered by the modification of streamline function and numerical techniques. This method is less affected by local minima than classical methods using the potential velocity. The streamline function methods for single and multiple obstacles in two dimensions were discussed with constrained searching space and the detailed parameters conditions. The simulation results confirm that this method is feasible and suitable for autonomous underwater vehicles.