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Energy-Optimal Trajectory Planning for Autonomous Underwater Vehicles Using Pontryagin’s Maximum Principle
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DOI：10.1109/joe.2026.3692006.png)
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Abstract
En 中文
Pontryagin’s Maximum Principle, a classical tool from optimal control theory, is used to compute energy-optimal trajectories for an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) navigating in deterministic, complex flows. This approach reformulates the optimal control problem as a two-point boundary value problem (TPBVP) for ordinary differential equations (ODEs) and offers computational benefits compared to alternative solutions which require the solution of partial differential equations (PDEs). This study introduces a numerical framework using pure shooting to solve the associated TPBVP and demonstrates its efficacy for trajectory optimization through analytic flows and current fields from high-resolution ocean simulations. The method is tested on two case studies: first, a multiday transit through the Southern California Bight, where ocean currents are dominated by mesoscale eddies and tidal variability, and energy-optimal planning predicts over 20% of savings relative to a straight-line transit, and second, a multihour transit off the coast of Ram Head, St. John, U.S. Virgin Islands, where the flow is dominated by energetic tidal vortices and energy consumption varies by up to 50% within a 6 h launch window. In both cases, the tradeoff between time and energy is analyzed for a wide range of AUVs that are parameterized by their nominal speed through water, between 0.25 and 2.0 m/s.
Keywords:
Autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs)
dynamics
motion planning
numerical methods
optimal control
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