Path optimization of underwater vehicles in multi-obstacle environment based on energy constraint strategy

Purpose To solve the problem that the underwater vehicles is difficult to turn and exit in a small range in the face of complex marine environment such as concave and ring under the limitation of its limitation of its shape and maximum steering angle, this paper aims to propose an improved ant colony algorithm based on trap filling strategy and energy consumption constraint strategy. Design/methodology/approach Firstly, on the basis of searching the global path, the disturbed terrain was pre-filled in the complex marine environments. Based on the energy constraint strategy, the ant colony algorithm was improved to make the search path of the underwater vehicle meet the requirements of the lowest energy consumption and the shortest path in the complex obstacle environment. Findings The simulation results showed that the modified grid environment diagram effectively reduced the redundancy search and improved the optimization efficiency. Aiming at the problem of “the shortest distance is not the lowest energy consumption” in the traditional path optimization algorithm, the energy consumption level was reduced by 26.41% after increasing the energy consumption constraint, although the path length and the number of inflection points were slightly higher than the shortest path constraint, which was more conducive to the navigation of underwater vehicles. Originality/value The method proposed in this paper is not only suitable for trajectory planning of underwater robots but also suitable for trajectory planning of land robots.