Low-Cost Underwater Swarm Acoustic Localization: A Review

Underwater swarm robotics has gained prominence as an innovative paradigm for diverse applications, including environmental monitoring and marine exploration. This review article presents a comprehensive review of low-cost underwater swarm acoustic localization systems, focusing on recent research findings validated through field experiments. To aid research on the concept of low-cost swarm acoustic localization, this article provides overview of cost-effective underwater swarm applications and the applicability assessment of traditional acoustic localization strategies, then presents several crucial components for building an acoustic ranging-based low-cost swarm localization system, including low-cost acoustic modems and low-cost swarm localization system with cooperative strategies. In summary, this review serves as a valuable resource for researchers and practitioners in underwater swarm robotics and acoustic localization, addressing challenges, strategies, and goals of low-cost swarm acoustic localization systems.