Path Planning for AUVs with Energy-Optimal Velocity in Current Fields

This paper presents the energy-optimal velocity to solve the problem of energy-optimal path planning for autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) in current fields. In the proposed scheme, a sequence of thrust velocities and steering directions is predicted to enable vehicles to utilize/avoid currents and minimize their energy consumption. Each thrust velocity and steering direction are deduced through a vector analysis method under the expected displacement and corresponding current vector, which is the energy-optimal velocity. The proposed energy-optimal velocity combines the global optimization technique and guarantees the minimization of a vehicle’s energy consumption. Several experiments are performed on strong and turbulent current fields to validate the effectiveness of the proposed scheme.