AUV position estimation via acoustic seabed profile measurements

Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) being a powerful tool for exploring and investigating ocean resources can be used in a large variety of oceanographic, industry and defense applications. Underwater navigation for AUV is still a challenging task and the ability of AUV to correctly estimate its position within the underwater environment is often crucial for the success of its mission. AUV navigation is usually based only on the information obtained from the Doppler Velocity Loggers, Inertial Navigation Systems, etc. This type of navigation is subjected to a continuously growing error due to the absence of any external reference source (e.g. GPS or GLONASS). Reference measurements might also be provided by so-called feature points observation, which is a common instrument for the Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) navigation. Still, the great difference between acoustical and optical images makes it a rather difficult problem for AUV navigation, demanding the detailed preliminary mapping of the seabed area. The new generation of acoustic imaging gives rise to the new approaches to AUV navigation based on the absolute velocity measurements. Similar to the optical flow approach to UAV navigation, the information related to the absolute motion of the AUV may be extracted from the sequence of seabed profile measurements. In this paper, we propose an algorithm for the vehicle absolute position estimation by means of the acoustic seabed mapping.