Control and Dynamic Motion Planning for a Hybrid Air-Underwater Quadrotor: Minimizing Energy Use in a Flooded Cave Environment

TL;DR

This paper introduces a dynamic path planning algorithm for an amphibious quadrotor navigating flooded environments, aiming to minimize energy consumption by modeling its complex 6-DOF dynamics and using layered planning architecture.

Contribution

It develops a nonlinear quaternion-based dynamic model and integrates layered planning with PRM and D* Lite for energy-efficient navigation in mixed environments.

Findings

Successful navigation in simulated flooded cave environments

Effective energy minimization demonstrated through planning algorithms

Real-time path updates with onboard sensor data

Abstract

We present a dynamic path planning algorithm to navigate an amphibious rotor craft through a concave time-invariant obstacle field while attempting to minimize energy usage. We create a nonlinear quaternion state model that represents the rotor craft dynamics above and below the water. The 6 degree of freedom dynamics used within a layered architecture to generate motion paths for the vehicle to follow and the required control inputs. The rotor craft has a 3 dimensional map of its surroundings that is updated via limited range onboard sensor readings within the current medium (air or water). Path planning is done via PRM and D* Lite.