Full-coverage path planning for an unmanned surface vehicle with maneuvering constraints

Objectives To overcome the dynamic constraints faced by unmanned surface vehicle (USV) in sea area coverage tasks, a coverage path planning scheme considering the motion characteristics of USV is constructed. Methods For obstacle-free environments, the polygon region coverage path planning is used to generate coverage paths. For obstacle or restricted environments, the trapezoidal decomposition is adopted to decompose the target area into several sub-regions. and then the genetic algorithm (GA) is used to optimize the link path between each sub-region. Based on the predicted trajectory set of the USV maneuvering motion model, the turning path and its corresponding reference propeller speed are optimized, and the full-coverage of the target sea area is achieved. Results The simulation results show that the method proposed in this paper can achieve 100% path coverage in the sea area containing obstacles, and each turning path satisfies the maneuvering motion characteristics of USV. Conclusions The full-coverage path planning in this paper can generate a path that satisfies the maneuvering constraint of USV, which has obvious practical value in the fields of the intelligent fishery, marine exploration, marine communication relay.