Variational Bayesian-Based Filter for Inaccurate Input in Underwater Navigation

Abstract

Autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) has been employed in oceanography applications based on a reliable navigation. The complex underwater environment leads to more velocity measurement errors of AUV, so it is difficult to determine the accurate navigation and positioning information. To solve the problem, a novel variational Bayesian-based filter for inaccurate input (VBFII) is proposed to determine the state information under the complex marine condition of inaccurate input. Firstly, the velocities are assumed to follow the Gaussian distribution, which can better describe the model of input information. Secondly, the augmentation method is used to augment the state vector and error covariance matrix to simplify calculation. The augmented state vector, the augmented predicted error covariance and measurement error noise matrices are derived more accurately based on the variational Bayesian (VB) approach. The experiment results show that the proposed VBFII has better estimation accuracy and robustness than other comparison algorithms.