NAVTECH

Navigation Techniques for Multiple Transponder Ultra Short Base-Line Acoustic Positioning Systems

This project will boost the development of advanced, high performance, nonlinear navigation and tracking algorithms and portable underwater acoustic positioning/tracking devices to be used by divers or small underwater robotic vehicles. Ultra-Short Baseline Positioning (USBL) systems and Inertial Navigation Systems (INS) have been successfully developed and employed. However, they are still very heavy, large and expensive, and not suitable to be used by divers or small robotic vehicles. The USBL is composed of an array of hydrophones synchronously sampled at high frequency and the INS comprises triads of accelerometers, rate-gyroscopes, and magnetometers. The proper integration of these two systems, from both a hardware and navigation filter point of view, allows for the development of high accuracy positioning systems. The objectives of this project are twofold: i) to conceive, develop, and test new advanced algorithms for high performance underwater localization and navigation resorting to single or multiple inverted USBL/INS systems; ii) design, implement, and test a new inverted USBL/INS unit, light and small enough to be used by divers and small underwater vehicles. The filter solutions to be conceived will exploit advanced synthesis techniques for nonlinear dynamical systems, in particular Lyapunov theory and involve the generalization of classical estimation techniques that have been explored in the last years by the project proponent team.

Funding: University of Macau

Dates: 2015-2018