Autonomous navigation with sparse reference points

This paper presents a navigation system for an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) that allows long range navigation by combining two distinct modes: local positioning with respect to a long baseline array of known localization (reference points) and autonomous mode in-between reference points, relying only on sonar/Doppler and depth information. In both modes, a Kalman based design approach was chosen. The performance of the proposed architecture is analyzed by Monte Carlo simulation considering a typical manoeuvring operation.<
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