USV Navigation in a Real-Time Map using Intelligent Path Planner

Unmanned surface vehicles (USV) are the recent trend in marine robotics due to their diverse application and easy deployment. Navigation of such USV in a real time marine environment is a major challenge and creates a need towards development of intelligent path planners which can increase the system autonomy. Many such intelligent path planning studies have been conducted in the area of mobile robotics but needs a lot more research to be conducted in area of marine robotics. In this study, a well know intelligent path planner A* has been implemented in a real time map using safety distance from obstacle as the criteria towards generating optimal trajectory for a single USV navigation. Different safety distances from obstacles ranging from 10 pixels to 40 pixels have been used to generate optimal trajectory and comparative performance has been analyzed in terms of computational time and path length. In this study, Portsmouth Harbour has been considered as area of study to determine the effectiveness of A* algorithm with different safety distance from obstacle as constraint. Algorithm has been validated on computer-based simulations using C++ and OpenCV libraries.