Vision-based positioning of Unmanned Surface Vehicles using Fiducial Markers for automatic docking

Abstract

This paper describes a method of using fiducial markers to aid Unmanned Surface Vehicles (USVs) as an additional positioning source during auto-docking. Vision-based techniques allow USVs to localize themselves relative to their surroundings without relying on external communication. This paper shows and evaluates a vision-based strategy to localize USVs to a pier. We used the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) with Real-Time kinematic (RTK) and Inertial Navigation System (INS) with a base station on the pier to validate the vision-based position estimates. The experiment shows that traditional computer vision techniques using fiducial markers can give accurate outdoor position estimates in good conditions. We also highlight some adverse conditions where the performance decreased considerably.