Path planning and guidance for underactuated vehicles with limited field-of-view

Abstract When GPS is not available, 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 can be used in the navigation and to overcome the lack of other sources of positioning. However, these systems often have a limited range and angular 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 landmarks that are critical for the navigation inside the FOV while at the same time converging to the proposed path. The suggested approach is experimentally validated by implementation in an autonomous underwater vehicle.