A Method for Obtaining High-Coverage 3D Images of Rough Seafloor Using AUV – Real-Time Quality Evaluation and Path-Planning –

2013 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 364-374 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ayaka Kume ◽  
◽  
Toshihiro Maki ◽  
Takashi Sakamaki ◽  
Tamaki Ura

Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) are often used for seafloor exploration, and some AUVs are now being deployed to obtain detailed photomosaics of the seafloor. However, it is difficult for the results to be evaluated on-site, so the image maps obtained often have unscanned areas caused by occlusions, disturbances, etc. In order to improve the coverage of a map, operators have to plan a new path and then redeploy the AUV. This process is quite timeconsuming and troublesome. The authors propose a new method for an AUV to obtain a full-coverage 3D image of a rough, unknown seafloor in a single deployment. First, the AUV observes the seafloor by following a pre-determined path. Second, the AUV calculates the following on-site and based on the data obtained: 3D bathymetry map, unscanned areas on the map, and the next path that can be taken to image the unscanned areas effectively. Then, the AUV follows the new path to obtain better results. The performance of this proposed method is verified in both tank experiments and by simulation. In the experiments, the AUV “Tri-TON” succeeds in generating a route for a second observation, and the coverage increases from 73% to 82%. The performance of the method on the actual seafloor is verified using the results of the tank experiments and the bathymetry data on a chimney in Kagoshima Bay, Japan.

2013 ◽  
Vol 328 ◽  
pp. 128-132
Author(s):  
Yan Peng ◽  
Wei Qing Wu ◽  
Mei Liu ◽  
Shao Rong Xie ◽  
Jun Luo

The path planning relates to the safe movement and navigation of the Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUV). This paper discusses the way of real-time path planning for autonomous underwater vehicle based on tracking control lyapunov function. The simulation conducted on H300 illustrates the effectiveness of proposed method.


2011 ◽  
Vol 467-469 ◽  
pp. 1377-1385 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ming Zhong Yan ◽  
Da Qi Zhu

Complete coverage path planning (CCPP) is an essential issue for Autonomous Underwater Vehicles’ (AUV) tasks, such as submarine search operations and complete coverage ocean explorations. A CCPP approach based on biologically inspired neural network is proposed for AUVs in the context of completely unknown environment. The AUV path is autonomously planned without any prior knowledge of the time-varying workspace, without explicitly optimizing any global cost functions, and without any learning procedures. The simulation studies show that the proposed approaches are capable of planning more reasonable collision-free complete coverage paths in unknown underwater environment.


2014 ◽  
Vol 48 (3) ◽  
pp. 104-114 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yoshiki Sato ◽  
Toshihiro Maki ◽  
Ayaka Kume ◽  
Takumi Matsuda ◽  
Takashi Sakamaki ◽  
...  

AbstractAutonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) can operate without the need for human control or tether cables as long as there is sufficient energy. AUVs have recently been used for seafloor imaging. Visual observation by AUVs provides high-resolution color information of the seafloor. However, conventional observation techniques that follow a prespecified path offer limited coverage because it is impossible for operators to build a suitable path in unknown rough terrain. A flawed prespecified path will produce incomplete observation. If unobserved areas are found during postprocessing, another dive is necessary, which increases the total cost. To overcome this problem, the authors have proposed a path replanning method to realize high-coverage observation in one dive. With this method, the AUV evaluates unobserved areas after the first prespecified observation; if unobserved areas are found, the AUV recreates an appropriate path to cover what was missed. The validity of the proposed method was previously evaluated using an artificial target in a tank and in shallow seas at a depth of approximately 35 m. In this study, the feasibility of the method was validated in a more challenging setting: experimental data were taken from a hydrothermal vent field in Kagoshima Bay, Japan.


IEEE Access ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 9745-9768 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daoliang Li ◽  
Peng Wang ◽  
Ling Du

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