Validation of Underwater Acoustic-based Navigation and Geophysical Mapping with an Autonomous Surface Vehicle

Abstract

This paper addresses the field applications of an autonomous surface vehicle (ASV) for the development of underwater navigation and mapping systems. The ASV was developed on a catamaran by integrating various sensors and systems, including power and electrical propulsion, navigation and control, and communication devices. The authors are currently working on the development of acoustic-based navigation and geophysical mapping systems for autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) and an ASV is used for its preliminary validation. As ASVs can provide georeferenced (i.e., GPS) data, the performance of the developed navigation and mapping algorithms can be efficiently estimated. In the field test, the ASV performs two tasks: underwater acoustic-source searching and underwater geomagnetic-field-data gathering. Underwater acoustic data were used to validate the acoustic-based underwater navigation approach, and geomagnetic data were applied to build an underwater geophysical map. This paper presents the development process of the ASV and its practical application, along with the underwater navigation and mapping results.