A Hierarchical Global Path Planning Approach for AUV Based on Genetic Algorithm

Global path planning is one of the key technologies of AUV (autonomous underwater vehicle), and it represents the intelligence level of AUV in some ways. This paper proposes a hierarchical global path planning approach for autonomous underwater vehicle in ocean. This approach consists of successive decomposition of the robot´s workspace and searching for a path at each level of decomposition. To get a global shortest path, the genetic algorithm is used in the algorithm for its efficient on optimization. The approach proves to be flexible and practicable, and can reduce memory consumption significantly