Path Planning for Unmanned Surface Vehicle based on genetic algorithm and sequential quadratic programming

Path planning and obstacle avoidance of Unmanned Surface Vehicle (USV) is one of the hottest research topics in modem national defense and ocean engineering. Considering the issue of obstacle-free path planning of USV, this paper focuses on a 3-DoF USV and develops an algorithm design. We adopt Gauss pseudo-spectral method to discretize control model and make use of a hybrid algorithm to optimize which combines the advantage of genetic algorithm and sequential quadratic programming algorithm. Simulation results show that this method can quickly explore a high-precision route in an unknown environment which meets the mobility requirement of USV without setting the initial value artificially.