Are We Ready for Unmanned Surface Vehicles in Inland Waterways The USVInland Multisensor Dataset and Benchmark

The high performance and efficiency of multiple unmanned surface vehicles (multi-USV) promote the further civilian and military applications of coordinated USV. As the basis of multiple USVs’ cooperative work, considerable attention has been spent on developing the decentralized formation control of the USV swarm. Formation control of multiple USV belongs to the geometric problems of a multi-robot system. The main challenge is the way to generate and maintain the formation of a multi-robot system. The rapid development of reinforcement learning provides us with a new solution to deal with these problems. In this paper, we introduce a decentralized structure of the multi-USV system and employ reinforcement learning to deal with the formation control of a multi-USV system in a leader–follower topology. Therefore, we propose an asynchronous decentralized formation control scheme based on reinforcement learning for multiple USVs. First, a simplified USV model is established. Simultaneously, the formation shape model is built to provide formation parameters and to describe the physical relationship between USVs. Second, the advantage deep deterministic policy gradient algorithm (ADDPG) is proposed. Third, formation generation policies and formation maintenance policies based on the ADDPG are proposed to form and maintain the given geometry structure of the team of USVs during movement. Moreover, three new reward functions are designed and utilized to promote policy learning. Finally, various experiments are conducted to validate the performance of the proposed formation control scheme. Simulation results and contrast experiments demonstrate the efficiency and stability of the formation control scheme.

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Autonomous Navigation of a Team of Unmanned Surface Vehicles for Intercepting Intruders on a Region Boundary

Sensors ◽

10.3390/s21010297 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 21 (1) ◽

pp. 297

Author(s):

Ali Marzoughi ◽

Andrey V. Savkin

Keyword(s):

Motion Control ◽

Autonomous Vehicles ◽

Autonomous Navigation ◽

Control Algorithm ◽

Autonomous Vehicle ◽

Sufficient Conditions ◽

Real Life ◽

Unmanned Surface Vehicles ◽

Necessary And Sufficient ◽

See Region

We study problems of intercepting single and multiple invasive intruders on a boundary of a planar region by employing a team of autonomous unmanned surface vehicles. First, the problem of intercepting a single intruder has been studied and then the proposed strategy has been applied to intercepting multiple intruders on the region boundary. Based on the proposed decentralised motion control algorithm and decision making strategy, each autonomous vehicle intercepts any intruder, which tends to leave the region by detecting the most vulnerable point of the boundary. An efficient and simple mathematical rules based control algorithm for navigating the autonomous vehicles on the boundary of the see region is developed. The proposed algorithm is computationally simple and easily implementable in real life intruder interception applications. In this paper, we obtain necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of a real-time solution to the considered problem of intruder interception. The effectiveness of the proposed method is confirmed by computer simulations with both single and multiple intruders.

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Real-Time Monocular Obstacle Detection Based on Horizon Line and Saliency Estimation for Unmanned Surface Vehicles

Mobile Networks and Applications ◽

10.1007/s11036-021-01752-2 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Jingyi Liu ◽

Hengyu Li ◽

Jun Liu ◽

Shaorong Xie ◽

Jun Luo

Keyword(s):

Real Time ◽

Obstacle Detection ◽

Unmanned Surface Vehicles ◽

Horizon Line

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Study on Unmanned Surface Vehicles used for Environmental Monitoring in Fragile Ecosystems

2020 IEEE 26th International Symposium for Design and Technology in Electronic Packaging (SIITME) ◽

10.1109/siitme50350.2020.9292219 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Mihaela Balanescu ◽

George Suciu ◽

Andreea Badicu ◽

Andrei Birdici ◽

Adrian Pasat ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Environmental Monitoring ◽

Unmanned Surface Vehicles

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Efficient obstacle detection based on prior estimation network and spatially constrained mixture model for unmanned surface vehicles

Journal of Field Robotics ◽

10.1002/rob.21983 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Jingyi Liu ◽

Hengyu Li ◽

Jun Luo ◽

Shaorong Xie ◽

Yu Sun

Keyword(s):

Mixture Model ◽

Obstacle Detection ◽

Unmanned Surface Vehicles ◽

Constrained Mixture

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Efficiency of modern geoinformation technologies application at survey works designing on inland waterways of Russia

MATEC Web of Conferences ◽

10.1051/matecconf/201926502016 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 265 ◽

pp. 02016

Author(s):

Vladimir Karetnikov ◽

Sergey Rudykh ◽

Aleksandra Ivanova

Keyword(s):

High Precision ◽

Russian Federation ◽

Support System ◽

Information Technologies ◽

Inland Waterways ◽

Geoinformation Technologies ◽

Modern Level ◽

The Russian Federation ◽

The Given ◽

Positive Effect

Survey works on inland waterways can be contingently divided into two directions. The first ones are directed at maintaining the given dimensions of the waterway and are carried out with the use of technical fleet vessels, which includes the dredging fleet. At the same time the basis creation, the results verification and the control of the survey works implementation are carried out by the survey party. The main types of work here are surveying and trawling works, the implementation of which is carried out at the present time on the inland waterways of Russia using geo information technologies, which makes it possible to improve the quality and efficiency of their realization. Such an approach, firstly, has a positive effect on the implementation of the navigational hydrographic support system of navigators, including in the part of electronic cartography, and secondly, it allows to provide the survey works realization at the modern level. The most effective approaches and methods of modern geo information technologies application, implemented for the collection and processing of high-precision bathymetric information and positioning data to ensure the navigation safety on the inland waterways of the Russian Federation, are considered in the paper.

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