Autonomous navigation of an underwater robot using fuzzy logic

A fuzzy logic for autonomous navigation of underwater robots is proposed in this paper. The VFF (virtual force field) method, which is widely used in the field of mobile robots, is modified for application to the autonomous navigation of underwater robots. This modified virtual force field (MVFF) method using fuzzy logic can be used for track keeping and/or collision avoidance. The collision avoidance algorithm has the ability to handle multiple static obstacles. Results of simulation show that the proposed method can be efficiently applied to collision avoidance and track keeping of the underwater robots.