Enhanced positioning of subsea vehicles-some practical Kalman filters

This paper describes the positioning problems which are posed by the increasing use of subsea vehicles as platforms for sensors such as side scan sonar, presents a discussion of the fundamentals of Kalman filtering and then describes the implementation of two such filters which have been designed for the specific purpose of improving the knowledge of position of a tethered subsea vehicle. The discussion is deliberately based on physical rather than mathematical concepts, and mathematical formulae are used only for illustration.<>