A Vertical Plane Obstacle Avoidance Planning Method for Autonomous Underwater Vehicle

This paper presents a vertical plane obstacle avoidance planning method based on fuzzy control for the advancement in the autonomous underwater vehicle’s capability of maneuvering over the gradual slope or step types of obstacles. The inputs of this method are outputs of the single beam obstacle avoidance sonars, and the output of it is depth decrement in the vertical plane. So the mapping is directly built from obstacle sensing to obstacle avoidance behavior. The semi-physical simulation tests indicate the validity of this method used by a certain autonomous underwater vehicle, and the virtues of rapid reaction, good stability, easy realization.