Motion Planning and Tracking Control of Unmanned Underwater Vehicles: Technologies, Challenges and Prospects

TL;DR

This paper reviews the latest technologies and challenges in motion planning and tracking control for unmanned underwater vehicles, highlighting recent advances, limitations, and future research directions for improved underwater navigation.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive review of conventional and intelligent methods for UUV motion planning and tracking control, analyzing their benefits and drawbacks.

Findings

Various methodologies have different advantages and limitations.

Emerging intelligent techniques show promise for improved UUV control.

Future research should address current challenges and explore new prospects.

Abstract

The motion planning and tracking control techniques of unmanned underwater vehicles (UUV) are fundamentally significant for efficient and robust UUV navigation, which is crucial for underwater rescue, facility maintenance, marine resource exploration, aquatic recreation, etc. Studies on UUV motion planning and tracking control have been growing rapidly worldwide, which are usually sorted into the following topics: task assignment of the multi-UUV system, UUV path planning and UUV trajectory tracking. This paper provides a comprehensive review of conventional and intelligent technologies for motion planning and tracking control of UUVs. Analysis of the benefits and drawbacks of these various methodologies in literature is presented. In addition, the challenges and prospects of UUV motion planning and tracking control are provided as possible developments for future research.