Performance verification of the alternating landmark navigation by multiple AUVs through sea experiments

Abstract

This paper reports the results of the sea experiments and the performance verification of the navigation method for wide area survey of seafloor using multiple autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs). It has been difficult for conventional navigation methods such as dead reckoning or inertial navigation to achieve wide area survey with high positioning accuracy by only AUVs. In the method, as the AUVs alternately land on the seafloor to become the landmark for each other, all the AUVs can navigate over a wide area with accurate positioning with the landmark AUV. The method was implemented to two AUVs “Tri-Dog 1” and “Tri-TON 1”. The performance of the method was verified using these AUVs through sea experiments and postprocessing simulation.