Target detection and recognition: a mission planner for Autonomous Underwater Vehicles

This paper proposes a mission planner controller, developed to manage a group of Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) performing a target detection and recognition task. The whole mission is divided in two fundamental steps: i) an area covering task, aimed at finding objects of interest and implementing the Behavior-Based (BB) approach introduced in [1]; ii) a real-time path planner, leading the group towards the target, based on a modified Artificial potential Field (APF) controller. Moreover, a new formation control technique based on a modified Van der Pol oscillator is studied and integrated. To test the proposed mission planner, a global simulation environment has been implemented, including a real vehicle model. Results demonstrate the good overall performances of the proposed approach in several scenarios.