Path Planning of Bio-inspired Swarm of AUVs using Distributed Path Consensus algorithm.

This paper uses the multi agent system (MAS) as the bioinformatics-inspired technique for guiding a team of autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) toward desired destination. This problem mimics the team behaviour towards achieving a common target. Here, each AUV estimates the position of the neighbour AUVs while moving towards the destination. An individual AUV is designated as an agent connected by a communication network and assumes full communication. The proposed multi-AUV system constitutes of a leader AUV and three follower AUVs. A distributed path consensus (DPC) is proposed that determine the distance constraint to ensure the neighbouring agent AUVs must maintain a predefined distance between each other while moving towards the respective destinations. Due to the proposed distance constraint, AUVs stays at a safe distance from each other and also from the static obstacles while maintaining underwater communication using interactive switching topology. The performance of the optimized path is obtained using MATLAB simulation. From the obtained results, it is observed that the proposed control algorithm provides effective co-operative motion control of multiple AUVs along the desired paths and avoid obstacles successively. The proposed method solves coordination problem among multiple AUVs and increase the coverage of underwater missions like oceanographic surveys. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]