An adaptive dynamic window approach for UUV obstacle avoidance planning in 3D environments

Abstract

Unmanned Underwater Vehicles (UUVs) are essential equipment for Marine development, widely used in Marine scientific research, Marine resource survey, and Marine security. The autonomous navigation planning ability in unknown environments is a critical indicator for UUV intelligence. This paper focuses on the particularity of UUV motion and the complexity of the underwater environment and proposes an adaptive Dynamic Window Approach (DWA) for UUV obstacle avoidance planning. The adaptive DWA introduces novel heading angle evaluation and adaptive dynamic strategies to solve the problems of poor adaptability of traditional DWA to complex environments and unreasonable path selection in encountering dynamic obstacles and approaching targets. Simulations verify the effectiveness and superiority of the proposed method.