• International Journal of Ocean System Engineering
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• v.1 no.4
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• pp.192-197
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• 2011

This paper describes the mathematical modeling, control algorithm, system design, hardware implementation and experimental test of a Manta-type Unmanned Underwater Vehicle (MUUV). The vehicle has one thruster for longitudinal propulsion, one rudder for heading angle control and two elevators for depth control. It is equipped with a pressure sensor for measuring water depth and Doppler Velocity Log for measuring position and angle. The vehicle is controlled by an on-board PC, which runs with the Windows XP operating system. The dynamic model of 6DOF is derived including the hydrodynamic forces and moments acting on the vehicle, while the hydrodynamic coefficients related to the forces and moments are obtained from experiments or estimated numerically. We also utilized the values obtained from PMM (Planar Motion Mechanism) tests found in the previous publications for numerical simulations. Various controllers such as PID, Sliding mode, Fuzzy and $H{\infty}$ are designed for depth and heading angle control in order to compare the performance of each controller based on simulation. In addition, experimental tests are carried out in a towing tank for depth keeping and heading angle tracking.

• The Journal of Korea Robotics Society
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.28-38
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• 2014

This paper verifies the performance of Extended Kalman Filter(EKF) and MCL(Monte Carlo Localization) approach to localization of an underwater vehicle through experiments. Especially, the experiments use acoustic range sensor whose measurement accuracy and uncertainty is not yet proved. Along with localization, the experiment also discloses the uncertainty features of the range measurement such as bias and variance. The proposed localization method rejects outlier range data and the experiment shows that outlier rejection improves localization performance. It is as expected that the proposed method doesn't yield as precise location as those methods which use high priced DVL(Doppler Velocity Log), IMU(Inertial Measurement Unit), and high accuracy range sensors. However, it is noticeable that the proposed method can achieve the accuracy which is affordable for correction of accumulated dead reckoning error, even though it uses only range data of low reliability and accuracy.

• Journal of Ocean Engineering and Technology
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• v.24 no.3
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• pp.46-51
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• 2010

This paper describes the implementation of a precise underwater navigation solution using a multi-sensor fusion technique based on USBL, DVL, and IMU measurements. To implement this precise underwater navigation solution, three strategies are chosen. The first involves heading alignment angle identification to enhance the performance of a standalone dead-reckoning algorithm. In the second, the absolute position is found quickly to prevent the accumulation of integration error. The third one is the introduction of an effective outlier rejection algorithm. The performance of the developed algorithm was verified with experimental data acquired by the deep-sea ROV, Hemire, in the East-sea during a survey of a methane gas seepage area at a 1,500 m depth.

• Journal of Ocean Engineering and Technology
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• v.19 no.5 s.66
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• pp.71-77
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• 2005

This paper presents an integrated underwater navigational algorithm for unmanned underwater vehicles, using additional two-range transducers. This paper proposes a measurement model, using two range measurements, to improve the performance of an IMU-DVL (inertial measurement unit - Doppler velocity log) navigation system for long-time operation of underwater vehicles, excluding DVL measurement. Extended Kalman filter was adopted to propagate the error covariance, to update the measurement errors, and to correct the state equation when the external measurements are available. Simulation was conducted with the 6-d.o.f nonlinear numerical model of an AUV in lawn-mowing survey mode, at current flaw, where the velocity information is unavailable. Simulations illustrate the effectiveness of the integrated navigation system, assisted by the additional range measurements without DVL sensing.

• Journal of Ocean Engineering and Technology
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• v.31 no.2
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• pp.177-182
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• 2017

This paper describes an unscented Kalman filter approach to estimate the bias in magnetic field measurements. A microelectromechanical systems attitude heading reference system (MEMS AHRS) was used to measure the magnetic field, together with the acceleration and angular rate. A magnetic field is usually used for yaw detection, while the acceleration serves to detect the roll and pitch. Magnetic field measurements are vulnerable to distortion due to hard-iron effect and soft-iron effect. The bias in the measurement accounts for the hard-iron effect, and this paper focuses on an approach to estimate this bias. The proposed method is compared with other methods through experiments that implement the navigation of an underwater robot using an AHRS and Doppler velocity log. The results verify that the compensation of the bias by the proposed method improves the navigation performance more than or comparable to the compensation by other methods.

• The Transactions of The Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers
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• v.65 no.11
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• pp.1868-1878
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• 2016

This paper proposes a novel velocity estimator for long-term underwater navigation of autonomous underwater vehicles(AUVs). Provided that an external position fix is not given, a viable goal in designing a underwater navigation algorithm is to reduce the divergence rate of position error only using the sporadic velocity information obtained from Doppler velocity log(DVL). For such case, the performance of underwater navigation eventually depends on accuracy and reliability of external velocity information. This motivates us to devise a velocity estimator which can drastically enhance the navigation performance even when the DVL measurement is unavailable. Incorporating the Gertler-Hagen hydrodynamics model of an AUV with the measurement models of velocity and depth sensors, the velocity estimator design problem is resolved using the extended Kalman filter. Different from the existing methods in which an AUV simulator is regarded as a virtual sensor, our approach is less sensitive to the model uncertainty often encountered in practice. This is because our velocity filter estimates the simulator errors with sensor aids and furthermore compensates these errors based on the indirect feedforward manner. Through the simulations for typical AUV navigation scenarios, the effectiveness of the proposed scheme is demonstrated.

• International Journal of Ocean System Engineering
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• v.1 no.2
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• pp.60-67
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• 2011

This paper presents an in-situ correction method to compensate for the position error of an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) near the sea floor. AUVs generally have an inertial navigation system assisted with auxiliary navigational sensors. Since the inertial navigation system shows drift in position without the bottom reflection of a Doppler velocity log, external acoustic positioning systems, such as an ultra short baseline (USBL), are needed to set the position without surfacing the AUV. The main concept of the correction method is as follows: when the AUV arrives near the sea floor, the vehicle moves around horizontally in a circular mode, while the USBL transceiver installed on a surface vessel measures the AUV's position. After acquiring one data set, a least-square curve fitting method is adopted to find the center of the AUV's circular motion, which is transferred to the AUV via an acoustic telemetry modem (ATM). The proposed method is robust for the outlier of USBL, and it is independent of the time delay for the data transfer of the USBL position with the ATM. The proposed method also reduces the intrinsic position error of the USBL, and is applicable to the in-situ calibration as well as the initialization of the AUVs' position. Monte Carlo simulation was conducted to verify the effectiveness of the method.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics and Information Engineers
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• v.54 no.3
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• pp.108-118
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• 2017

This paper presents experimental results of realtime sonar-based SLAM (simultaneous localization and mapping) using probability-based landmark-recognition. The sonar-based SLAM is used for navigation of underwater robot. Inertial sensor as IMU (Inertial Measurement Unit) and DVL (Doppler Velocity Log) and external information from sonar image processing are fused by Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) technique to get the navigation information. The vehicle location is estimated by inertial sensor data, and it is corrected by sonar data which provides relative position between the vehicle and the landmark on the bottom of the basin. For the verification of the proposed method, the experiments were performed in a basin environment using an underwater robot, yShark.

• Journal of Ocean Engineering and Technology
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• v.19 no.6 s.67
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• pp.78-85
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• 2005

Initial alignment and localization are important topics in inertial navigation systems, since misalignment and initial position error wholly propagate into the navigation systems and deteriorate the performance of the systems. This paper presents the error convergence characteristics of the hybrid navigation system for underwater vehicles initial position, which is based on an inertial measurement unit (IMU) accompanying a range sensor. This paper demonstrates the improvement on the navigational performance oj the hybrid system with the range information, especially focused on the convergence of the estimation of underwater vehicles initial position error. Simulations are performed with experimental data obtained from a rotating ann test with a fish model. The convergence speed and condition of the initial error removal for random initial position errors are examined with Monte Carlo simulation. In addition, numerical simulation is conducted with an AUV model in lawn-mowing survey mode to illustrate the error convergence of the hybrid navigation System for initial position error.

• Journal of Ocean Engineering and Technology
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• v.33 no.5
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• pp.470-478
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• 2019

Because the global positioning system (GPS) is not available in underwater environments, an inertial navigation system (INS)/doppler velocity log (DVL) integrated navigation system is generally implemented. In general, an INS/DVL integrated system adopts a loosely coupled method. However, in this loosely coupled method, although the measurement equation for the filter design is simple, the velocity of the body frame cannot be accurately measured if even one of the DVL transducer signals is not received. In contrast, even if only one or two velocities are measured by the DVL transducers, the tightly coupled method can utilize them as measurements and suppress the error increase of the INS. In this paper, a filter was designed to regenerate the measurements of failed transducers by taking advantage of the tightly coupled method. The regenerated measurements were the normal DVL transducer measurements and the estimated velocity in RPM. In order to effectively estimate the velocity in RPM, a filter was designed considering the effects of the tide. The proposed filter does not switch all of the measurements to RPM if the DVL transducer fails, but only switches information from the failed transducer. In this case, the filter has the advantage of being able to be used as a measurement while continuously estimating the RPM error state. A Monte Carlo simulation was used to determine the performance of the proposed filters, and the scope of the analysis was shown by the standard deviation ($1{\sigma}$, 68%). Finally, the performance of the proposed filter was verified by comparison with the conventional tightly coupled method.