In Situ Calibration of Underwater Glider Flight Model Using Acoustic Doppler Current Profilers

Abstract

Abstract The angle of attack (AOA) is the difference between the underwater glider’s path and pitch angle and is necessary to accurately estimate dead-reckoned position and depth-averaged velocity. The AOA is also important for any sensor measurements that are affected by the glider’s velocity through water, such as ocean turbulence measurement. A glider flight model is generally used to accurately estimate AOA and glider’s actual velocity based on the knowledge of lift and drag coefficients optimized for each glider. This paper examines the AOA of a Slocum glider using an acoustic Doppler current profiler (ADCP) to demonstrate a regression method to estimate these coefficients. Since the current shear was sufficiently small on average, it was reasonable to assume that the ADCP velocity at the nearest bin could capture the glider’s motion during flight and was used to calculate AOA. The lift and drag coefficients were optimized so the flight model estimated the observed pitch–AOA relationship derived from the ADCP and the glider’s pitch observations. The resultant coefficients also satisfied the vertical and horizontal constraints of glider motion and gave unbiased estimates of turbulence intensity derived from the flight model and ADCP. Our method was also applied to a SeaExplorer glider to derive the lift and drag coefficients for the first time. The observed pitch–AOA relationship was reasonably captured by the flight model with the resultant coefficients, suggesting that our method to estimate the lift and drag coefficient of underwater gliders can be applied to any type of underwater glider equipped with an ADCP.