Mechanical Imaging Sonar-based AUV Wall Following in a Water Tank

This paper presents a mechanical imaging sonar-based AUV wall following method which integrates sonar images and data from a Doppler velocity log and a gyrocompass to control an AUV to perform wall following at a fixed distance to the wall in a rectangular tank. The method has been implemented on the IUT-AUV I, an AUV developed by the Institute of Undersea Technology (IUT) at National Sun Yat-sen University. Different wall following experiments were carried out in a towing tank using the IUT-AUV I. The target distance between the right side of the AUV and the wall is 1.5 m. As for the distance between the front right corner of the AUV and the wall, the mean is between 1.40 and 1.43 m and the standard deviation is between 0.34 and 0.36 m. As for the distance between the back right corner of the AUV and the wall, the mean is between 1.47 and 1.49 m and the standard deviation is between 0.33 and 0.38 m. Experimental results show that the IUT-AUV I can successfully complete the wall following mission in a towing tank through the presented method.