Path planning for an autonomous underwater vehicle in pole inspection

2477-2484Present study consists a pre-mission time optimal inspection path planning for visual inspection of a well-characterized submerged vertical pole using an autonomous underwater vehicle. Target environment, which is the entire surface of a submerged pole, is modelled as a planar map for easy path planning. Proposed inspection path planning utilizes the concept of grid-based coverage path planning, where the target environment is break into many same size grid cells. Various inspection path patterns are designed manually based on boustrophedon and spiral motions with different sweep direction and turning pattern. They are analysed in term of trajectory length, inspection time, and coverage percentage to choose the best inspection path among them. Calculation results show that the chosen inspection path can cover 99% of the entire pole surface with shortest distance travelled and shortest operational time