Autonomous Trajectory Design System for Mapping of Unknown Sea-floors using a team of AUVs

Abstract

This research develops a new on-line trajectory planning algorithm for a team of Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs). The goal of the AUVs is to cooperatively explore and map the ocean seafloor. As the morphology of the seabed is unknown and complex, standard non-convex algorithms perform insufficiently. To tackle this, a new simulation-based approach is proposed and numerically evaluated. This approach adapts the Parametrized Cognitive-based Adaptive Optimization (PCAO) algorithm. The algorithm transforms the exploration problem to a parametrized decision-making mechanism whose real-time implementation is feasible. Upon that transformation, this scheme calculates off-line a set of decision making mechanism’s parameters that approximate the - non-practically feasible - optimal solution. The advantages of the algorithm are significant computational simplicity, scalability, and the fact that it can straightforwardly embed any type of physical constraints and system limitations. In order to train the PCAO controller, two morphologically different seafloors are used. During this training, the algorithm outperforms an unrealistic optimal-one-step-ahead search algorithm. To demonstrate the universality of the controller, the most effective controller is used to map three new morphologically different seafloors. During the latter mapping experiment, the PCAO algorithm outperforms several gradient-descent-like approaches.