Vision Restricted Path Planning and Control for Underactuated Vehicles

Abstract: Autonomous vehicles can obtain navigation information by observing a source with a camera or an acoustic system mounted on the frame of the vehicle. This information properly fused provides navigation information that can overcome the lack of other sources of positioning. However, these systems often have a limited angular field-of-view (FOV). Due to this restriction, motion along some paths will make it impossible to obtain the necessary navigation information as the source is no longer in the vehicle’s FOV. This paper proposes both a path planning approach and a guidance control law that allows the vehicle to preserve a certain object or feature inside the FOV while at the same time converging to the proposed path.