Underwater chemical plume tracing based on partially observable Markov decision process

Chemical plume tracing based on autonomous underwater vehicle uses chemical as a guidance to navigate and search in the unknown environments. To solve the key issue of tracing and locating the source, this article proposes a path-planning strategy based on partially observable Markov decision process algorithm and artificial potential field algorithm. The partially observable Markov decision process algorithm is used to construct a source likelihood map and update it in real time with environmental information from the sensors on autonomous underwater vehicle in search area. The artificial potential field algorithm uses the source likelihood map for accurately planning tracing path and guiding the autonomous underwater vehicle to track along the path until the source is detected. This article carries out simulation experiments on the proposed algorithm. The experimental results show that the algorithms have good performance, which is suitable for chemical plume tracing via autonomous underwater vehicle. Compared with the bionic method, the simulation results show that the proposed method has higher success rate and better stability than the bionic method.