Study on Improved D* Lite-Based Obstacle Avoidance and Navigation Strategy for the Ellipsoidal Underwater Robot

Due to the complexity of the underwater environment, it is of great significance to improve the obstacle avoidance and navigation ability of Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs). In this paper, the Ellipsoidal Underwater Robot (EUR) platform was introduced first. Then, an improved D* Lite path planning and navigation algorithm was proposed, where the improving strategy includes a risk model and path smooth strategy based on splines. Besides, according to the planned path, a trajectory tracking law for the EUR was developed in order to guide the EUR in the expected direction. Furthermore, the simulation and practical experiments were conducted, and the results consistently demonstrated that the proposed strategy in this paper could effectively plan and guide the EUR to perform path planning and navigation while avoiding obstacles.