Combined Doppler/LBL Based Navigation of Underwater Vehicles

This paper first reviews conventional techniques for underwater vehicle navigation, and describes a dopplerbased navigation system recently implemented by the authors. Experimental results show that a system combining conventional long-baseline (LBL) acoustic navigation data with doppler navigation data provides superior navigation precision and update rates in comparison to raw LBL or doppler navigation alone. The experiments were conducted during a field deployment in which the new robot navigation system enabled precision acoustic and optical survey, as well as minimally invasive object recovery in the Eastern Mediterranean.

[1]  Robert C. Spindel,et al.  An acoustic navigation system , 1974 .

[2]  R. Spindel,et al.  A high-resolution pulse-Doppler underwater acoustic navigation system , 1976, IEEE Journal of Oceanic Engineering.

[3]  P. H. Milne,et al.  Underwater Acoustic Positioning Systems , 1983 .

[4]  J. A. Catipovic,et al.  High data rate acoustic telemetry for moving ROVs in a fading multipath shallow water environment , 1990, Symposium on Autonomous Underwater Vehicle Technology.

[5]  R. Spindel,et al.  Nonlinear Kalman filtering of long-baseline, short-baseline, GPS, and depth measurements , 1991, [1991] Conference Record of the Twenty-Fifth Asilomar Conference on Signals, Systems & Computers.

[6]  N. A. Brokloff,et al.  Matrix algorithm for Doppler sonar navigation , 1994, Proceedings of OCEANS'94.

[7]  J. A. Catipovic,et al.  An integrated approach to multiple AUV communications, navigation and docking , 1996, OCEANS 96 MTS/IEEE Conference Proceedings. The Coastal Ocean - Prospects for the 21st Century.

[8]  S. M. Smith,et al.  Experimental results of an inexpensive short baseline acoustic positioning system for AUV navigation , 1997, Oceans '97. MTS/IEEE Conference Proceedings.

[9]  A. J. Healey,et al.  Asynchronous data fusion for AUV navigation via heuristic fuzzy filtering techniques , 1997, Oceans '97. MTS/IEEE Conference Proceedings.

[10]  N. A. Brokloff.  Dead reckoning with an ADCP and current extrapolation , 1997, Oceans '97. MTS/IEEE Conference Proceedings.

[11]  John J. Leonard,et al.  Comparison of fix computation and filtering for autonomous acoustic navigation , 1998, Int. J. Syst. Sci..

[12]  Hanumant Singh,et al.  Towards Precision Robotic Maneuvering, Survey, and Manipulation in Unstructured Undersea Environments , 1998 .

[13]  Hanumant Singh,et al.  Advances in Doppler-based navigation of underwater robotic vehicles , 1999, Proceedings 1999 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (Cat. No.99CH36288C).