When there are obstacles around the target point, the mobile robot cannot reach the target using traditional Artificial Potential Field (APF). Besides, the traditional APF is prone to local oscillation in complex terrain such as three-point collinear or semi-closed obstacles. Aiming at solving the defects of traditional APF, a novel improved APF algorithm named back virtual obstacle setting strategy-APF (BVO-APF) has been proposed in this paper. There are two main advantages of the proposed method. Firstly, by redefining the gravitational function as logarithmic function, the proposed method can make the mobile robot reach the target point when there are obstacles around the target. Secondly, the proposed method can avoid falling into local oscillation for both three-point collinear and semi-closed obstacles. Compare with APF and other improved APF, the feasibility of the algorithm is proved through software simulation and practical application.

In the agricultural industry, an evolutionary effort has been made over the last two decades to achieve precise autonomous systems to perform typical in-field tasks including harvesting, mowing, and spraying. One of the main objectives of an autonomous system in agriculture is to improve the efficiency while reducing the environmental impact and cost. Due to the nature of these operations, complete coverage path planning approaches play an essential role to find an optimal path which covers the entire field while taking into account land topography, operation requirements and robot characteristics. The aim of this paper is to propose a complete coverage path planning approach defining the optimal movements of mobile robots over an agricultural field. First, a method based on tree exploration is proposed to find all potential solutions satisfying some predefined constraints. Second, a Similarity check and selection of optimal solutions method is proposed to eliminate similar solutions and find the best solutions. The optimization goals are to maximize the coverage area and to minimize overlaps, non-working path length and overall travel time. In order to explore a wide range of possible solutions, our approach is able to consider multiple entrances for the robot. For fields with a complex shape, different dividing lines to split it into simple polygons are also considered. Our approach also computes the headland zones and covers them automatically which leads to a high coverage rate of the field.

Long-term operation of autonomous robots creates new challenges to the Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM). Varying conditions of the vehicle’s surroundings, such as appearance variations (lighting, daytime, weather, or seasonal) or reconfigurations of the environment, are a challenge for SLAM algorithms to adapt to new changes while preserving old states. When also operating for long periods and trajectory lengths, the map should readjust to environment changes but not grow indefinitely, where the map size should be dependent only on the explored environment area. Long-term SLAM intends to overcome the challenges associated with lifelong autonomy and improve the robustness of autonomous systems. Although several studies review SLAM algorithms, none of them focus on lifelong autonomy. Thus, this paper presents a systematic literature review on long-term localization and mapping following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analysis (PRISMA) guidelines. The review analyzes 142 works covering appearance invariance, modeling the environment dynamics, map size management, multi-session, and computational issues including parallel computing and timming efficiency. The analysis also focus on the experimental data and evaluation metrics commonly used to assess long-term autonomy. Moreover, an overview over the bibliographic data of the 142 records provides analysis in terms of keywords and authorship co-occurrence to identify the terms more used in long-term SLAM and research networks between authors, respectively. Future studies can update this paper thanks to the systematic methodology presented in the review and the public GitHub repository with all the documentation and scripts used during the review process.

Hydrobatic Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) can be efficient in range and speed, as well as agile in maneuvering. They can be beneficial in scenarios such as obstacle-avoidance, inspections, docking, and under-ice operations. However, such AUVs are underactuated systems - this means exploiting the system dynamics is key to achieving elegant hydrobatic maneuvers with minimum controls. This paper explores the use of Model Predictive Control (MPC) techniques to control underactuated AUVs in hydrobatic maneuvers and presents new simulation and experimental results with the small and hydrobatic SAM AUV. Simulations are performed using nonlinear MPC (NMPC) on the full AUV system to provide optimal control policies for several hydrobatic maneuvers in Matlab/Simulink. For implementation on AUV hardware in ROS, a linear time varying MPC (LTV-MPC) is derived from the nonlinear model to enable real-time control. In simulations, NMPC and LTV-MPC shows promising results to offer much more efficient control strategies than what can be obtained with PID and LQR based controllers in terms of rise-time, overshoot, steady-state error and robustness. The LTV-MPC shows satisfactory real-time performance in experimental validation. The paper further also demonstrates experimentally that LTV-MPC can be run real-time on the AUV in performing hydrobatic maneouvers.