Multi-AUV Cooperative Target Hunting Based on Improved Potential Field in a Surface-Water Environment

In this paper, target hunting aims to detect target and surround the detected target in a surface-water using Multiple Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (multi-AUV) in a given area. The main challenge in multi-AUV target hunting is the design of AUV’s motion path and coordination mechanism. To conduct the cooperative target hunting by multi-AUV in a surface-water environment, an integrated algorithm based on improved potential field (IPF) is proposed. First, a potential field function is established according to the information of the surface-water environment. Then, the dispersion degree, the homodromous degree, and district-difference degree are introduced to increase the cooperation of the multi-AUV system. Finally, the target hunting is solved by embedding the three kinds of degree into the potential field function. The simulation results show that the proposed approach is applicable and feasible for multi-AUV cooperative target hunting.