Efficient optimal path planning of unmanned surface vehicles

The objective of the path planning of marine vehicles is to determine a collision-free path from the start to the goal point in a practical marine environment comprising static and moving obstacles. A good number of path-planning approaches have been adopted from the area of mobile robotics and extended in the area of marine robotics. The current chapter overviews application of grid-based path planners in the area of unmanned surface vehicles (USVs). The current chapter also proposes a novel and computationally efficient approach towards optimal path planning of USVs