Automatic path planning for autonomous underwater vehicles based on an adaptive differential evolution

Abstract

This paper proposes a path planner for autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) in 3-D underwater space. We simulate an underwater space with rugged seabed and suspending obstacles, which is close to real world. In the proposed representation scheme, the problem space is decomposed into parallel subspaces and each subspace is described by a grid method. The paths of AUVs are simplified as a set of successive points in the problem space. By jointing these waypoints, the entire path of the AUV is obtained. A cost function with penalty method takes into account the length, energy consumption, safety and curvature constraints of AUVs. It is applied to evaluate the quality of paths. Differential evolution (DE) algorithm is used as a black-box optimization tool to provide optimal solutions for the path planning. In addition, we adaptively adjust the parameters of DE according to population distribution and the blockage of parallel subspaces so as to improve its performance. Experiments are conducted on 6 different scenarios. The results validate that the proposed algorithm is effective for improving solution quality and avoiding premature convergence.