Global path planning for Unmanned Surface Vehicles in complex maritime environments considering environmental interference

With the continuous increase in maritime traffic and navigation tasks, the demand for mission execution in complex maritime environments, such as islands and reefs, has grown. Path planning for Unmanned Surface Vehicles (USVs) in these areas requires overcoming challenges posed by sea wind interference, island topography, and other complex geographical factors, ensuring safe and efficient navigation. This paper aims to delve into the impact of factors such as water currents and wind speed on ship navigation paths and proposes a comprehensive path planning compensation strategy that considers these factors. Firstly, regarding the planned potential field space, directional and dilation factors are introduced to alter the distribution of potential risks, enhancing the safety and reducing potential risks in the planned routes of USV. Secondly, a detailed analysis of different environmental factors is conducted, exploring their impact mechanisms on the performance of USV navigation and planned routes. Based on the analysis, this paper establishes a mathematical model for environmental interference factors, considering the parameters of USV, laying the foundation for modeling environmental issues in global path planning. In terms of path evaluation metrics, this paper defines path length and time, as well as safety indicators for avoiding dangerous areas in the environment, as evaluation criteria. To address the interference of waves and currents in complex water areas with the planned navigation route, this paper proposes a navigation point compensation optimization strategy based on the Fast Sweeping Method (FSM). Combining the calculated estimated drift distance with the planned route comprehensively, a corrective strategy model is proposed by integrating it with the B-spline method. Finally, simulation and emulation were conducted. •An improved path planning algorithm is proposed in this study.•In response to complex navigational water environments and narrow navigation channels, this paper proposes a directional factor.•A novel heading point path compensation is introduced for enhancing the path planning of USVs under the influence of real-world conditions and disturbances like wind and currents.