3D Localization for Multiple AUVs in Anchor-Free Environments by Exploring the Use of Depth Information

Dear Editor, This letter investigates the cooperative localization problem for multiple autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) in underwater anchor-free environments, where AUV localization errors grow without bound due to the accumulated errors in inertial measurements (termed accumulated errors hereafter) and the lack of anchors (with known positions). Different from previous works, this letter is based on a message-passing distributed framework and the designed algorithm improves the localization accuracy mainly by the cooperation among AUVs and the use of depth information to mitigate the influence of the accumulated errors and harsh environments. Through simulations, the advantages of the proposed algorithm are verified by comparisons with different state-of-the-art alternative methods.