The Prototype To Control The Rotational Motion Applied To An Inertial Navigation System Equipped With An Autonomous Underwater Vehicle

Generally, an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) has some navigation systems in order to cruise autonomously without communications from the outside world. One of them is an inertial navigation system (INS) which is composed of accelerometers and gyros. The INS outputs the absolute position and posture of a moving object equipped with it. However its output includes some error owing to drift-bias errors of the sensors; accelerometers and gyros. And the position accuracy of it is reduced because the error is accumulated with time-series. So the method has been proposed to improve the performance of the INS owing to the rotational motion. And the effect of the method was confirmed in experiments that were carried out in static condition. And the prototype of the rotation control system to apply the method to an AUV was designed. This system controls the rotational speed and direction in accordance with the AUV’s motion. In this paper, the method and the control system are described, and experimental results carried out to confirm effects of them on land are shown.