Trajectory Planning Towards Water-Air Trans-Media Motion for Robotic Dolphin

Water-air trans-media navigators have multi-media motion modes, breaking through the limitation that traditional robots can only operate in a single medium. Autonomous navigation is an indispensable component of the process of transmedia motion. Most of the current work has only completed the development and testing of prototypes, and the problem of task-oriented motion planning and control needs to be solved. In this paper, a safe and efficient hierarchical approach is proposed. First, a novel rapidly exploring random tree-based algorithm is proposed to search for a suitable path. Then, by fixing bound waypoints, the time-optimization trajectory is planned. Finally, the trajectory tracker is designed based on nonlinear model predictive control (NMPC). Simulation experiments numerically validate the proposed method, offering some new insights for further trans-media motions.