A novel approach for 3PDP and real-time via point path planning of Dubins’ vehicles in marine applications

This paper addresses the problem of finding the shortest Dubins path between three consecutive via-points with prescribed initial and final orientations and without a prescribed orientation at the intermediate via-point. The problem plays a crucial role for online path planning in many marine applications, as for example, it is instrumental to solve the Dubins Traveling Salesman Problem. A novel solution is proposed using simple tools borrowed from analytic geometry, and an efficient algorithm is presented as a basic routine for real-time path planning algorithms. Extensive simulations confirmed the efficiency of the proposed strategy in terms of both computational complexity and accuracy of the solution. Moreover, a comparative analysis with recent existing approaches is performed showing the effectiveness of the proposed solution.