Study On Local Path Planning And Path Following Control For Inland Water USV

Unmanned Surface Vehicle(USV)possesses the capability to fulfill various operation tasks in harsh conditions with much less cost.For inland water USV,the global route must follow the fixed water way,which degrades the complexity of global route planning.But the existence of narrow channel,intersection route,crossing bridge,navigation lock,and nearby passing vessels causes the difficulties for local navigation.In addition,the inland water current and vessel under-actuation characteristic increase the risk of navigation safety.Therefore,the requirements of local path planning and path following control are much important for inland water USV.In this research,a method of local path planning for inland water USV is proposed with careful consideration of current effects.The conventional Line of Sight algorithm is expanded to the general curve path following control.The combination of the above methods brought a successful model testing of inland water USV.The ship model could fulfill the autonomous navigation along the planned path in various current conditions.The testing result demonstrates the effectiveness of the proposed method,which is valuable for further research of inland water USV.