Automatic berthing for an underactuated unmanned surface vehicle: A real-time motion planning approach

This paper presents Extended Dynamic Window Approach (EDWA) for the automatic berthing of an underactuated unmanned surface vehicle (USV). Different from the conventional works based on Control Theory, present approach focuses on the field of planning to complete the process of the automatic berthing. The approach takes all the dynamic constraints of the USV into account, and obtains the whole predicted trajectories of both constant force and deceleration phases. By performing the collision detection, the predicted trajectories with obstacles are discarded and remaining trajectories are evaluated by an objective function to select the optimal trajectory for the USV. The case studies are conducted in order to verify the feasibility and performance of the presented approach. The results show that the approach can realize the automatic berthing under the influence of wind loads and obstacles.