The major problem addressed by this research is the large and/or expensive equipment required by a conventional navigation system to accurately determine the position of an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) during all phases of an underwater search or mapping mission. The approach taken was to prototype an integrated navigation system which combines Global Positioning System (OPS) and Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU), waterspeed and heading information using Kalman filtering techniques. Actual implementation was preceded by a computer simulation to test where the unit would fit into a larger hardware and software hierarchy of an AUV. The system was then evaluated in experiments which began with land based cart tests and progressed to open water trials where the unit was placed in a towed body behind a boat and alternately submerged and surfaced to provide periodic OPS updates to the Inertial Navigation System (INS). Test results and qualitative error estimates indicate that submerged navigation accuracy comparable to that of differential OPS may be attainable for periods of 30 seconds or more with low cost components of a small physical size.
Design and Evaluation of an Integrated GPS/INS System for Shallow-Water AUV Navigation (SANS)
1995
241 pages
Report
No indication
English
Navigation Systems , Military Operations, Strategy, & Tactics , Integrated systems , Underwater vehicles , Position finding , Global positioning system , Inertial measurement units , Underwater tracking , Test and evaluation , Kinematics , Computer programs , Computerized simulation , Software engineering , Robotics , Sizes(Dimensions) , Low costs , Kalman filtering , Accuracy , Theses , Estimates , Costs , Shallow water , Error analysis , Missions , Self operation , Mapping , Inertial navigation , Hierarchies , Open water , Towed bodies , Sans(Shallow water auv navigation) , Auv(Autonomous underwater vehicle) , Ins(Inertial navigation system) , Phoenix underwater vehicles