Abstract:

A formation obstacle avoidance strategy is proposed based on the improved artificial potential field method to optimize the cooperative obstacle avoidance path of multi?UUV in an unknown underwater environment， which is prone to the local minimum problem and the loss of formation communication due to formation dispersion. Firstly， the formation control between multi?UUV is established based on the pilot?following method， and an improved artificial potential field function in exponential form is used to solve the emergency steering problem caused by the sudden change of the potential field in the traditional form. Meantime， while the effects of forward speed and deviation angle are introduced in the repulsion field， and the deviation degree repulsion combined with the trim angle is introduced to optimize the final obstacle avoidance control command， and a virtual point guidance method is used to solve the local minimum problem. Finally， a cooperative obstacle avoidance strategy for UUV is designed to optimize the formation deviation and recovery time， taking into account the effect of formation. The experimental results verify the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm in multi?UUV formation obstacle avoidance.

Key words: UUV formation, local minimum, improved artificial potential field method, collaborative obstacle avoidance, formation recovery time