Review of Obstacle Detection Systems for Collision Avoidance of Autonomous Underwater Vehicles Tested in a Real Environment

Abstract

The high efficiency of obstacle detection system (ODS) is essential to obtain the high performance of autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) carrying out a mission in a complex underwater environment. Based on the previous literature analysis, that include path planning and collision avoidance algorithms, the solutions which operation was confirmed by tests in a real-world environment were selected for this paper consideration. These studies were subjected to a deeper analysis assessing the effectiveness of the obstacle detection algorithms. The analysis shows that over the years, ODSs being improved and provide greater detection accuracy that results in better AUV response time. Almost all analysed methods are based on the conventional approach to obstacle detection. In the future, even better ODSs parameters could be achieved by using artificial intelligence (AI) methods.