Advances in Doppler-Based Navigation of Underwater Robotic Vehicles

New low-cost commercially available bottom-lock doppler sonars can augment or replace the acoustic timeof-flight navigation systems commonly employed for threedimensional underwater robot vehicle navigation. This paper first reviews conventional techniques for underwater vehicle navigation, and describes a doppler-based navigation system recently developed by the authors. Second, we identify principal limitations to the bottom-track precision of doppler based navigation systems. Third, we analyze the effect of heading-sensor errors on doppler bottom-track precision. Experimental results compare bottom-track error resulting from a doppler navigation using low-precision magnetic heading sensor with bottomtrack error resulting from a high-precision a ring-laser gyroscope. The experiments were conducted during a field deployment in which the new robot navigation system enabled precision acoustic and optical survey, as well as minimally invasive object recovery from hydrothermal vents in t...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 1999
• Where: ICRA
• Authors: Louis L. Whitcomb, Dana R. Yoerger, Hanumant Singh
• Keywords: Doppler Based Navigation, ICRA 1999, Navigation Systems, Robotics, Vehicle Navigation