Unmanned surface vehicles (USVs) rely on multi-sensor perception, such as radar, LiDAR, GPS, and vision, to ensure safe and efficient navigation in complex maritime environments. Traditional ant colony optimization (ACO) for path planning, however, suffers from premature convergence, slow adaptation, and poor smoothness in cluttered waters, while the dynamic window approach (DWA) without global guidance can become trapped in local obstacle configurations. This paper presents a sensor-oriented hybrid method that couples an improved ACO for global route planning with an enhanced DWA for local, real-time obstacle avoidance. In the global stage, the ACO state–transition rule integrates path length, obstacle clearance, and trajectory smoothness heuristics, while a cosine-annealed schedule adaptively balances exploration and exploitation. Pheromone updating combines local and global mechanisms under bounded limits, with a stagnation detector to restore diversity. In the local stage, the DWA cost function is redesigned under USV kinematics to integrate velocity adaptability, trajectory smoothness, and goal-deviation, using obstacle data that would typically originate from onboard sensors. Simulation studies, where obstacle maps emulate sensor-detected environments, show that the proposed method achieves shorter paths, faster convergence, smoother trajectories, larger safety margins, and higher success rates against dynamic obstacles compared with standalone ACO or DWA. These results demonstrate the method’s potential for sensor-based, real-time USV navigation and collision avoidance in complex maritime scenarios.

This study proposes a force–position hybrid control method for quadruped robots based on the Model Predictive Control (MPC) algorithm, aiming to address the challenges of stability and adaptability in complex terrain environments. Traditional control methods for quadruped robots are often based on simplified models, neglecting the impact of complex terrains and unstructured environments on control performance. To enhance the real-world performance of quadruped robots, this paper employs the MPC algorithm to integrate force and position control to achieve precise force–position hybrid regulation. By transforming foot-end forces into joint torques and optimizing them using kinematic inverse solutions, the robot’s stability and motion accuracy in challenging terrains is further enhanced. In this study, a Kalman filter-based state estimation method is adopted to estimate the robot’s state in real time, enabling closed-loop control through the MPC framework, combined with kinematic inverse solutions for hybrid control. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed MPC algorithm significantly improves the robot’s adaptability and control accuracy across various terrains. In particular, it exhibits superior performance and robustness in multi-contact and uneven terrain scenarios. This research provides a novel approach for deploying quadruped robots in dynamic and complex environments and offers strong support for further optimization of motion control strategies.

Automated guided vehicles (AGVs) play a critical role in indoor environments, where battery endurance and reliable recharging are essential. This study proposes a multi-sensor fusion approach that integrates LiDAR, depth cameras, and infrared sensors to address challenges in autonomous navigation and automatic recharging. The proposed system overcomes the limitations of LiDAR’s blind spots in near-field detection and the restricted range of vision-based navigation. By combining LiDAR for precise long-distance measurements, depth cameras for enhanced close-range visual positioning, and infrared sensors for accurate docking, the AGV’s ability to locate and autonomously connect to charging stations is significantly improved. Experimental results show a 25% increase in docking success rate (from 70% with LiDAR-only to 95%) and a 70% decrease in docking error (from 10 cm to 3 cm). These improvements demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed sensor fusion method, ensuring more reliable, efficient, and precise operations for AGVs in complex indoor environments.