Search Results (9)

Due to the influence of the complex underwater environment, the initial alignment method for Doppler velocity log (DVL)-aided strap-down inertial navigation systems (SINS) often suffer from performance degradation, especially when DVL measurements are contaminated by outliers. In this paper, an outlier-resistant Initial Alignment method with interference suppression for SINS/DVL integrated navigation system is proposed, by which, by constructing an improved Mahalanobis distance anomalous detection criterion, the anomaly of the residual vector composed of observation vectors is judged, and an adaptive weighting factor is introduced into the observation matrix to suppress the abnormal interference in the alignment process. Simulation and experimental results show that, compared with existing initial alignment methods, the proposed method achieves higher alignment accuracy in the presence of outliers, which is more suitable for the SINS/DVL integrated navigation system. Full article

Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) navigation relies on bottom-tracking velocity from Doppler Velocity Log (DVL) for positioning through dead-reckoning or aiding Strapdown Inertial Navigation System (SINS). In mid-water environments, the distance between the AUV and the seafloor exceeds the detection range of DVL, causing failure of bottom-tracking and leaving only water-relative velocity available. This makes unknown ocean currents a significant error source that leads to substantial cumulative positioning errors. This paper proposes a method for mid-water ocean current estimation using multibeam bathymetric survey data. First, the method models the regional unknown current field using radius basis functions (RBFs) and establishes an AUV dead-reckoning model incorporating the current field. The RBF model inherently satisfies ocean current incompressibility. Subsequently, by dividing the multibeam bathymetric point cloud data surveyed by the AUV into submaps and performing a terrain-matching algorithm, relative position observations among different AUV positions can be constructed. These observations are then utilized to estimate the RBF parameters of the current field within the navigation model. Numerical simulations and experiments based on real-world bathymetric and ocean current data demonstrate that the proposed method can effectively capture the complex spatial variations in ocean currents, contributing to the accurate reconstruction of the mid-water current field and significant improvement in positioning accuracy. Full article

Autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) play an increasingly essential role in the field of polar ocean exploration, and the Doppler velocity log (DVL)-aided strapdown inertial navigation system (SINS) is widely used for it. Due to the rapid convergence of the meridians, traditional inertial navigation mechanisms fail in the polar region. To tackle this problem, a transverse inertial navigation mechanism based on the earth ellipsoidal model is designed in this paper. Influenced by the harsh environment of the polar regions, unknown and time-varying outlier noise appears in the output of DVL, which makes the performance of the standard Kalman filter degrade. To address this issue, a robust Kalman filter algorithm based on Mahalanobis distance is used to adaptively estimate measurement noise covariance; thus, the Kalman filter gain can be modified to weight the measurement. A trial ship experiment and semi-physical simulation experiment were carried out to verify the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm. The results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm can effectively resist the influence of DVL outliers and improve positioning accuracy. Full article

The navigation performance of an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) as the main tool for exploring the ocean greatly affects its work efficiency. Under the circumstance that high-precision GNSS positioning signals cannot be obtained, the role of the Strapdown Inertial Navigation System/Doppler Velocity Log (SINS/DVL) integrated navigation system is becoming more prominent. Due to marine creatures or the seafloor topography, DVL is prone to outliers or even failures during measurement. To solve these problems, a LSTM/SVR-VBAKF algorithm aided integrated navigation system is proposed. First, under normal circumstances of DVL, the output information of SINS and DVL are used as training samples, and they train the Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) model. To enhance the robustness and adaptability of the filter, a novel variational Bayesian adaptive filtering algorithm based on support vector regression is proposed. When the DVL formation is missing, the deep learning method adopted in this paper will be continuously output to ensure the effect of integrated navigation. The shipboard test data is verified from two aspects: filter performance and neural network-assisted integrated navigation system capability. The experimental results show that the new method proposed in this paper can effectively handle a situation where DVL output is not available. Full article

As an important means of underwater navigation and positioning, the accuracy of SINS/DVL integrated navigation system greatly affects the efficiency of underwater work. Considering the complexity and change of the underwater environment, it is necessary to enhance the robustness and adaptability of the SINS/DVL integrated navigation system. Therefore, this paper proposes a new adaptive filter based on support vector regression. The method abandons the elimination of outliers generated by Doppler Velocity Logger (DVL) in the measurement process from the inside of the filter in the form of probability density function modeling. Instead, outliers are eliminated from the perspective of external sensors, which effectively improves the robustness of the filter. At the same time, a new Variational Bayesian (VB) strategy is adopted to reduce the influence of inaccurate process noise and measurement noise, and improve the adaptiveness of the filter. Their advantages complement each other, effectively improve the stability of filter. Simulation and ship-borne tests are carried out. The test results show that the method proposed in this paper has higher navigation accuracy. Full article

High accuracy and reliable navigation in the underwater environment is very critical for the operations of autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs). This paper proposes an adaptive federated interacting multiple model (IMM) filter, which combines adaptive federated filter and IMM algorithm for AUV in complex underwater environments. Based on the performance of each local system, the information sharing coefficient of the adaptive federated IMM filter is adaptively determined. Meanwhile, the adaptive federated IMM filter designs different models for each local system. When the external disturbances change, the model of each local system can switch in real-time. Furthermore, an AUV integrated navigation system model is constructed, which includes the dynamic model of the system error and the measurement models of strapdown inertial navigation system/Doppler velocity log (SINS/DVL) and SINS/terrain aided navigation (SINS/TAN). The integrated navigation experiments demonstrate that the proposed filter can dramatically improve the accuracy and reliability of the integrated navigation system. Additionally, it has obvious advantages compared with the federated Kalman filter and the adaptive federated Kalman filter. Full article

It is difficult for autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) to obtain accurate aided position information in many locations because of underwater conditions. The velocity accuracy from the Doppler velocity log (DVL) is a key element in deciding the AUV position accuracy when the integration system of Strapdown Inertial Navigation System/DVL/Magnetic Compass/Press Sensor (SINS/DVL/MCP/PS) is adopted. However, random noise and sudden noise in DVL caused by sound scattering, fishing populations, and seafloor gullies introduce level attitude errors and accumulate as position error. To restrain random noise, a velocity tracing method is designed based on the constant velocity model and the assumption of slow motion of AUV. To address sudden noise, a fault diagnosis method based on the χ 2 rule is introduced to judge sudden changes from innovation. When a sudden change occurs, the time update of the velocity from the tracing model is used for data fusion instead of the velocity from DVL. Simulation test results indicate that with this velocity tracing algorithm, random noise in the DVL can be effectively restrained. The level attitude accuracy and the level position accuracy are also improved with the time update of the velocity when the sudden change occurs. Full article

This paper studies an underwater positioning algorithm based on the interactive assistance of a strapdown inertial navigation system (SINS) and LBL, and this algorithm mainly includes an optimal correlation algorithm with aided tracking of an SINS/Doppler velocity log (DVL)/magnetic compass pilot (MCP), a three-dimensional TDOA positioning algorithm of Taylor series expansion and a multi-sensor information fusion algorithm. The final simulation results show that compared to traditional underwater positioning algorithms, this scheme can not only directly correct accumulative errors caused by a dead reckoning algorithm, but also solves the problem of ambiguous correlation peaks caused by multipath transmission of underwater acoustic signals. The proposed method can calibrate the accumulative error of the AUV position more directly and effectively, which prolongs the underwater operating duration of the AUV. Full article

In-motion alignment of Strapdown Inertial Navigation Systems (SINS) without any geodetic-frame observations is one of the toughest challenges for Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUV). This paper presents a novel scheme for Doppler Velocity Log (DVL) aided SINS alignment using Unscented Kalman Filter (UKF) which allows large initial misalignments. With the proposed mechanism, a nonlinear SINS error model is presented and the measurement model is derived under the assumption that large misalignments may exist. Since a priori knowledge of the measurement noise covariance is of great importance to robustness of the UKF, the covariance-matching methods widely used in the Adaptive KF (AKF) are extended for use in Adaptive UKF (AUKF). Experimental results show that the proposed DVL-aided alignment model is effective with any initial heading errors. The performances of the adaptive filtering methods are evaluated with regards to their parameter estimation stability. Furthermore, it is clearly shown that the measurement noise covariance can be estimated reliably by the adaptive UKF methods and hence improve the performance of the alignment. Full article