Complete Coverage Path Planning in an Unknown Underwater Environment Based on D-S Data Fusion Real-Time Map Building

A real-time map-building system is proposed for an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) to build a map of an unknown underwater environment. The system, using the AUV's onboard sensor information, includes a neurodynamics model proposed for complete coverage path planning and an evidence theoretic method proposed for map building. The complete coverage of the environment guarantees that the AUV can acquire adequate environment information. The evidence theory is used to handle the noise and uncertainty of the sensor data. The AUV dynamically plans its path with obstacle avoidance through the landscape of neural activity. Concurrently, real-time sensor data are “fused” into a two-dimensional (2D) occupancy grid map of the environment using evidence inference rule based on the Dempster-Shafer theory. Simulation results show a good quality of map-building capabilities and path-planning behaviors of the AUV.