Increasing persistent navigation capabilities for underwater vehicles with augmented terrain-based navigation

Accurate and energy-efficient navigation and localization methods for autonomous underwater vehicles continues to be an active area of research. As interesting as they are important, ocean processes are spatiotemporally dynamic and their study requires vehicles that can maneuver and sample intelligently while underwater for extended durations. In this paper, we present a new technique for augmenting terrain-based navigation with physical water data to enhance the utility of traditional methods for navigation and localization. We examine the construct of this augmentation method over a range of deployment regions, e.g., ocean and freshwater lake. Data from field trials are presented and analyzed for multiple deployments of an autonomous underwater vehicle.