An Acoustic Ranging Measurement Aided SINS/DVL Integrated Navigation Algorithm Based on Multivehicle Cooperative Correction

As the exploration of marine resources continues to deepen, the utilization of Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) for conducting marine resource surveys and underwater environmental mapping has become a common practice. In order to successfully accomplish exploration missions, AUVs require high-precision underwater navigation information as support. A Strapdown Inertial Navigation System (SINS) can provide AUVs with accurate attitude and heading information, while a Doppler Velocity Log (DVL) is capable of measuring the velocity vector of the AUVs. Therefore, the integrated SINS/DVL navigation system can furnish the necessary navigational information required by an AUV. In response to the issue of DVL being susceptible to external environmental interference, leading to reduced measurement accuracy, this paper proposes an end-to-end deep-learning approach to enhance the accuracy of DVL velocity vector measurements. The utilization of the raw measurement data from an Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU), which includes gyroscopes and accelerometers, to assist the DVL in velocity vector estimation and to refine it towards the Global Positioning System (GPS) velocity vector, compensates for the external environmental interference affecting the DVL, therefore enhancing the navigation accuracy. To evaluate the proposed method, we conducted lake experiments using SINS and DVL equipment, from which the collected data were organized into a dataset for training and assessing the model. The research results show that the DVL vector predicted by our model can achieve a maximum improvement of 69.26% in terms of root mean square error and a maximum improvement of 78.62% in terms of relative trajectory error.

To improve the navigation accuracy of AUV (autonomous underwater vehicle), SINS (strapdown inertial navigation system), GPS (global positioning system), DVL (Doppler velocity log) and TAN (terrain aided navigation) are adopted in the AUV integrated navigation system. The mathematic model of the AUV integrated navigation system and the observation model of the chosen navigation sensors are built according to the system simulation experiments data. An improved filter based on RBF neural network for adjusting the information sharing factors is designed and implemented in the AUV integrated navigation system. Simulation experiments are carried out according to the mathematic model. It can be concluded from the simulation experiments that the navigation accuracy is improved substantially with the multiple sensors and federated filter in case that colored noise is engaged. The novel integrated navigation system is effective in prohibiting the divergence of the filter and improving fault tolerance ability and it greatly raises the precision of the navigation accuracy for the AUV integrated navigation system.

Estimation for state-of-charge of lithium-ion battery based on an adaptive high-degree cubature Kalman filter

We, Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC), are developing an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) whose main mission is monitoring a site at the sea bottom for the carbon dioxide capture and storage (CCS). The AUV cruises very near the sea bottom, and is equipped with chemical sensors in order to detect escape of CO2 from sub-bottom. Of course, the position information of the AUV is critical information for the monitoring. In this paper, a conceptual design of navigation of the AUV is described. Recently, navigation of AUV is implemented by integrating multiple navigation devices including inertial navigation system (INS), Doppler velocity log (DVL), depth sensor, acoustic navigation system, and others. The AUV under construction will be equipped with these navigation sensors, and will integrate those sensors’ outputs to navigate herself. In order to measure the absolute position of the AUV the acoustic method is one of fundamental technique. At the first step of development of the AUV, three acoustic methods are considered to adopt. The three methods are super short baseline (SSBL) method which is a tracking from support ship or other surface station, long baseline (LBL) which is navigation based on preplaced acoustic transponders, and virtual LBL (VLBL) which is navigation based on only single transponder. These acoustic methods are integrated with the navigation result of INS, depth sensor, and DVL. The three methods are used in each appropriate case. Which feature of observation is desired simplicity, accuracy, or independence from support ship and time efficiency? The acoustic method is influenced by environment, and also output of other sensors is depending on the environment, for example the DVL miss the data when the terrain is with many up-hills and down-hills. The integration or filtering parameters of the navigation should be adjusted depending on the influential environmental factor.

Underwater navigation methodology based on intelligent velocity model for standard AUV

A novel intelligent adaptive Kalman Filter for estimating the Submarine's velocity: With experimental evaluation

For the degradation of the filtering performance of the INS/CNS navigation system under measurement noise uncertainty, an adaptive cubature Kalman filter (CKF) is proposed based on improved empirical mode decomposition (EMD) and a resampling-free sigma-point update framework (RSUF). The proposed algorithm innovatively integrates improved EMD and RSUF into CKF to estimate measurement noise covariance in real-time. Specifically, the improved EMD is used to reconstruct measurement noise, and the exponential decay weighting method is introduced to emphasize the use of new measurement noise while gradually discarding older data to estimate the measurement noise covariance. The estimated measurement noise covariance is then imported into RSUF to directly construct the posterior cubature points without a resampling step. Since the measurement noise covariance is updated in real-time and the prediction cubature points error is directly transformed to the posterior cubature points error, the proposed algorithm is less sensitive to the measurement noise uncertainty. The proposed algorithm is verified by simulations conducted on the INS/CNS-integrated navigation system. The experimental results indicate that the proposed algorithm achieves better performance for attitude angle.

Aiming at the situation that the underwater integrated navigation system is easy to be disturbed and the output is unavailable during the task of underwater vehicle, a RVBAKF/ LSTM hybrid method is proposed in this paper. Considering the actual underwater working environment of autonomous underwater vehicles (AUV), the measured value of Doppler velocity log (DVL) is prone to outliers or even interruption, so it is very important to improve the fault tolerance of integrated navigation system. For the processing of outliers, a robust adaptive filter based on VB theory is proposed. Its advantage is to realize the adaptation of time-varying noise and reduce the interference of outliers to the integrated navigation system. Firstly, selecting the SINS output related to AUV velocity, such as velocity, attitude, angular velocity and specific force as the training input when the DVL output is normal. When DVL output is interrupted, the long short-term memory (LSTM) model is used to provide pseudo measurement values for integrated navigation system. The effectiveness of the method is verified by the on-board experimental data. When the DVL output is interrupted, the method can effectively improve the accuracy of the integrated navigation system. The method in this paper is compared with four different hybrid methods, and the results are obviously better than the four methods.

For the long-range voyage and light Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV), the high-precision navigation and positioning is the key point in the completion of the task. Therefore, this paper designs an underwater integrated navigation system, including the strapdown inertial navigation system (SINS), Doppler velocity loci (DVL), magnetometers and depth sensor. Based on the principle of each navigation sensor and the corresponding error model, the mathematic model of each sub-filter of the integrated navigation system is firstly established. Secondly, combining the combination filter and federated filtering theory, the integrated navigation system based on federated filtering is designed. Finally, to eliminate the influence of unknown or time-varying statistical characteristics on the Kalman filter (KF), a new federated filtering algorithm based on Sage-Husa adaptive KF is proposed to estimate each local filter. And the corresponding simulation results will show the performance of the research.

The cubature Kalman filter (CKF) is well-known for a decade as a derivative-free nonlinear Kalman filter that is well-suited for high-dimensional nonlinear estimation problems. This paper further develops this classical CKF in order to cope with time-varying noise statistics as well as inequality constraints on the estimated states. The resulting adaptive filter is suggested to provide more accurate state estimates and to be more robust against filter divergence. Moreover, this contribution proposes an automated filter design based on numerical optimization which uses the normalized estimation error squared (NEES) and the normalized innovation squared (NIS) as part of the objective function. The novel adaptive CKF is applied to wind turbines in order to assess the potential improvement for state and parameter estimation. The simulation results for an illustrative acid test scenario with time-varying measurement noise show the superiority of the novel adaptive CKF since it compensates the noise robustly and thereby outperforms the classical filter.

The objective of this thesis is to contribute to Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) navigation by improving vehicle localisation accuracy when Doppler Velocity Log (DVL) bottom-tracking is unavailable. The Inertial Navigation System (INS) based localisation solution is prone to extreme uncertainties due to double integration of inherent errors within the INS acceleration measurements, unless the solution being externally aided (e.g. velocity measurements using the DVL bottom-track). As a solution for this, an improved model-aided INS localisation technique is introduced, which is complimented with the development of a novel model calibration and new water column velocity estimation method. The techniques established in this project are tested and validated using experimental data from a set of field manoeuvres using a <i>Gavia</i> class AUV and the performance is compared against other commonly used localisation methods. A baseline mathematical model was developed in this work using system identification to predict the motion response of the AUV based on its control commands. However, such models are generally calibrated for low water column velocities and a standard vehicle configuration, and are limited in application for variations in environmental conditions. To address this limitation, a novel model calibration technique was established to field calibrate the parameters within the baseline model to the current operating condition and vehicle configuration. Model calibration improved the results of the baseline model up to 73% when operating in low energy environments and the AUV position can be computed within an uncertainty range of 1.5% of the distance travelled. In comparison, uncertainties of conventional non-bottom-tracking localisation techniques could be up to 10% in similar environmental conditions. A secondary approach is also presented to determine the hydrodynamic coefficients of the mathematical model using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulations and captive model experiments when the AUV is operating in complex flow conditions. A non-acoustic method was introduced to estimate the velocity of the water column using the motion response of the AUV. This method is capable of accurately estimating water column velocities in proximity to the AUV (i.e., the water column velocities at the same depth as the vehicle is), which is not typically resolved with existing methods such as acoustic Doppler current profilers. When the mathematical model-aided localisation solution is complimented with water column velocity prediction method, the localisation error is limited to less than 6% of the distance travelled even in extremely high currents (i.e. &gt;2 m s-1 in tested conditions). In such environmental conditions, the uncertainties of other commonly used non-bottom-tracking localisation methods, as tested against in this work, such as DVL water-track mode and unaided INS could be above 30%. One of the key advantages of the proposed localisation technique is that it could be applied to any torpedo shaped AUV (for example, platforms such as <i>REMUS, Iver, Bluefin, Explorer</i>, etc.) of any configuration by simply conducting a set of established field manoeuvres to identify its mathematical model parameters. Further, additional sensors beyond a typical AUV navigational payload (i.e. global positioning, accelerometers and gyroscopes) are not required to implement this technique in an AUV. The localisation technique developed in this thesis is capable of improving the motion control and navigation solution of the AUV in the absence of DVL bottom-tracking, which is critical for the expansion of vehicle performance in extreme environmental conditions.

Recent development and commercialization of relatively portable and inexpensive autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) have led to new methods for making hydrodynamic, chemical, and biological measurements in near-coastal, lake, and estuarine systems. Equipped with Doppler velocity log (DVL) technology to allow for deadreckoning navigation, this new class of AUVs has the potential to log not only vehicle motions, but water velocities as well. In this article, we assess the performance of the DVL acoustic Doppler current profiler (ADCP) equipped on the REMUS AUV (Hydroid) in three different environments: a tidally forced lake; a wave-forced, near-shore fringing coral reef; and a gently sloping continental shelf. In all three data sets, the water velocities measured by the AUV DVL compare favorably with measurements from nearby stationary acoustic Doppler current profilers. Nevertheless, the water velocity component measured parallel to the vehicle's tracks exhibited a bias in the direction of AUV motion, consistent with a previously reported bias found for the ship-mounted ADCP application in low-scattering environments. The fringing reef data suggest that DVLs are capable of partially resolving wave motions.

To improve the performance of strapdown inertial navigation system (SINS)/ Doppler velocity logs (DVL) integrated navigation system, a new Interacting Multiple Model Feedback Particle Filter (IMMFPF) approach is proposed under the condition of complex and changeable underwater environment. In this scheme, the Interacting Multiple Model uses to deal with the model switch, while FPF approach takes each particle as a controllable stochastic system. By finding the solution about the Euler-Lagrange boundary value, the optimal feedback control law of Kullback-Leibler distance is obtained, and then the state of the particle itself is corrected and updated. Both simulations and field test illustrate that proposed IMMFPF approach can achieve a more accurate solution and make a more correct and effective response for SINS/DVL integrated navigation system.

This paper reports a preliminary study for use of a fully dynamic vehicle process model in combined underwater communication and navigation (cooperative navigation) of underwater vehicles equipped with an acoustic modem, attitude, and depth sensors, but lacking a Doppler velocity log (DVL), and a surface vehicle equipped with an acoustic modem and GPS. We report both simulation and at-sea experimental trials with the JHU Iver3 autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV). The case of underwater vehicle navigation without a DVL is of interest in several use-cases including (a) small and low-cost underwater vehicles for which DVLs may be impractical or infeasible due to their size and cost and (b) for missions in which the vehicle's altitude above the sea floor (or depth beneath overhead ice) exceeds the DVL acoustic bottom-lock range. To the best of our knowledge, all previous studies on cooperative navigation have reported use of a kinematic process model, which works well in the presence of frequent, high-accuracy velocity measurements, as is the case when the vehicle is equipped with a DVL. This preliminary study suggests that the dynamical process model may offer a significant advantage over the purely kinematic model in the absence of frequent, high-accuracy velocity measurements, as is the case when the submerged vehicle is not equipped with a DVL.

Due to the influence of the complex underwater environment, the initial alignment method for Doppler velocity log (DVL)-aided strap-down inertial navigation systems (SINS) often suffer from performance degradation, especially when DVL measurements are contaminated by outliers. In this paper, an outlier-resistant Initial Alignment method with interference suppression for SINS/DVL integrated navigation system is proposed, by which, by constructing an improved Mahalanobis distance anomalous detection criterion, the anomaly of the residual vector composed of observation vectors is judged, and an adaptive weighting factor is introduced into the observation matrix to suppress the abnormal interference in the alignment process. Simulation and experimental results show that, compared with existing initial alignment methods, the proposed method achieves higher alignment accuracy in the presence of outliers, which is more suitable for the SINS/DVL integrated navigation system.