Combined Doppler/LBL Based Navigation of Underwater Vehicles

Abstract

This paper first reviews conventional techniques for underwater vehicle navigation, and describes a dopplerbased navigation system recently implemented by the authors. Experimental results show that a system combining conventional long-baseline (LBL) acoustic navigation data with doppler navigation data provides superior navigation precision and update rates in comparison to raw LBL or doppler navigation alone. 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 in the Eastern Mediterranean.