Experiments with obstacle and terrain avoidance of autonomous underwater vehicle

Real-time obstacle and terrain avoidance is highly necessary for an autonomous underwater vehicle maneuvering near the rugged seafloor. This paper aims at an obstacle and terrain avoidance system for the deep-sea AUV built in SIA. This AUV will be used to survey deep-sea hydrothermal regions and need to follow rough terrain for obtaining stable acoustic or optical data. A new hybrid obstacle avoidance architecture will be proposed. The sonar image processing method and the real-time optimal obstacle avoidance method are summarized. Finally the lake experiment results are given to demonstrate the presented methods´ feasibility and validity.