Optimal Path Planning of an Unmanned Surface Vehicle in a Real-Time Marine Environment using Dijkstra Algorithm

Abstract

The growing need of ocean surveying and exploration for scientific and industrial application has led to the requirement of routing strategies for ocean vehicles which are optimal in nature. Most of the optimal path planning for marine vehicles had been conducted offline in a self-made environment. This paper takes into account a practical marine environment, i.e. Portsmouth Harbour, for finding an optimal path in terms of computational time between source and end points on a real time map for an USV. The current study makes use of a grid map generated from original and uses a Dijkstra algorithm to find the shortest path for a single USV.