AUV terminal docking experiments based on vision guidance

In this paper, we present the terminal docking experiment of an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) based on vision guidance. The configuration of this docking system, including the AUV and the docking system, is proposed. The vision guidance system using one camera and one light is described in detail. The vision based guidance algorithm namely the imaging processing can be divided into 4 stages: image acquisition, binarization of the grabbed images, elimination of noisy luminaries, estimation of the relative posture. Based on the vision based guidance algorithm, the control algorithm, which can control the underactuated AUV to track the dock without the distance information, is shown. To validate the proposed guidance and control algorithms, a pool trial was conducted. The results of the pool trial show the effectivity of proposed algorithm. Some improvements to be done in the future are described at last.