2025/01/21 by Jingqiang Bao, Xiaokai Mu, Yifan Xue +1
Engineering · Computer Science · #Underwater Vehicles and Communication Systems #Maritime Navigation and Safety #Robotic Path Planning Algorithms
paper · doi:10.1109/tvt.2025.3532364
Unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs) have become a feasible solution for all-Earth ocean exploration, efficiently operating in harsh environments from the Equator to the poles. However, existing methods struggle to provide continuous all-Earth navigation solutions for UUVs. This article underscores that a navigation scheme based on the Earth-centered Earth-fixed (ECEF) coordinate frame can effectively and simply achieve all-Earth navigation without singularities. Drawing from this highlight, we have designed a multi-sensor fusion scheme to integrate raw data from inertial measurement unit (IMU), underwater transponder positioning (UTP) system, Doppler velocity log (DVL), and depthometer (DM). Additionally, we have developed an IMU reconstruction algorithm to support the navigation scheme validation. This algorithm preserves the complex dynamics of the UUV and the intricate effects of the marine environment, and it inverses the IMU incremental data rather than instantaneous data, making it more aligned with the actual sampling process. Finally, the effectiveness and superiority of the proposed scheme have been verified through semi-physical experiments from the Equator to the North Pole.