Abstract
Background: Compared to the single unmanned boat, multi-unmanned boats have more flexible mobility and efficient task completion capabilities, which can effectively expand the types of tasks. However, the traditional independent path planning and obstacle avoidance methods of unmanned boats make it difficult to meet the requirements of collaborative operation among multiple unmanned boats due to the lack of information exchange.
Objective: According to the actual demand of multi unmanned boats' cooperative operation, a method of multi unmanned boats cooperative obstacle avoidance based on 5G edge computing is proposed to realize the unified planning and scheduling of multi unmanned boats.
Methods: Firstly, 5G technology and Kubeedge edge computing tools are used to build a multi unmanned boat collaborative obstacle avoidance system based on cloud, edge and end collaboration, and the Kubeedge edge computing platform was optimized by optimizing communication strategies, building a highly available Kubeedge cluster, building a Harbor image center, and using Web management interfaces further to improve the reliability and stability of the system. Secondly, the YOLOR-Deepport multi-target recognition and tracking algorithm based on cloud, edge and end collaborative network is used to complete the recognition and tracking tasks of obstacle targets, and a set of EECBS path planning methods based on the Kubedge centralized control platform is designed to plan collision-free and efficient paths for each unmanned boat in realtime. Finally, the effectiveness of the system was verified through simulation experiments.
Results: The experimental results show that compared to the traditional autonomous planning obstacle avoidance method for unmanned boats, the collaborative planning obstacle avoidance method proposed in this paper can exhibit excellent performance in dense and narrow scenarios, with a more reasonable navigation path, a range reduction of 20% - 50%, and higher safety.
Conclusion: The results show that the cooperative obstacle avoidance system based on 5G edge computing designed in the paper is feasible, and it can effectively realize the cooperative path planning and obstacle avoidance of multi unmanned boats.
