Advances in Line-of-Sight Guidance for Path Following of Autonomous Marine Vehicles : An Overview

Autonomous marine vehicles (AMVs), including autonomous surface and underwater vehicles, are versatile means to explore, exploit, monitor, and protect marine resources and environments. Motion control is a fundamental enabling technique for state-of-the-art AMV development. Especially, guidance is a critical component in AMV motion control. In recent years, line-of-sight (LOS) guidance, as an efficient guidance method, has attracted tremendous interest from both theoretical and practical perspectives. In this paper, an overview of recent advances in LOS guidance for AMV path following is provided. First, a control objective for the path following of an AMV with a kinematic model is specified. Next, major LOS guidance laws for path following are reviewed in detail. Then, LOS guidance laws applicable to coordinated path following of multiple AMVs are elaborated. Finally, six challenging issues for future research are addressed.