Dead Reckoning for Trajectory Estimation of Underwater Drifters under Water Currents †

Abstract

Between external position updates, the most useful technique for trajectory estimation of a submerged drifter is dead reckoning (DR). These devices drift with the water current to measure the current’s velocity or to observe physical phenomena. We focus on the specific but important case of when the drifter, due to its size and shape, experiences acceleration by the water current, an effect that must be taken into account during the DR. The force induced by the water current over the drifter is translated into a shift in the heading direction, thus creating a horizontal (sideslip) and a vertical (angle of attack) directional angles between the drifter’s moving direction and its body frame. In this paper, we extend and modify techniques used for pedestrian DR and propose PCA-DR: a principle component analysis-based DR algorithm to estimate the directional angles. Used for cases where the water current is significant such that its force induces acceleration over the drifter and used only for short time periods of a few seconds between navigation fixes, PCA-DR uses acceleration measurements only and does not assume knowledge of the drifter’s dynamics. Instead, as part of the DR process, PCA-DR estimates the directional angles induced by the water current. Compared to the traditional DR approach, our results demonstrate good navigation performance. A designated sea experiment demonstrates the applicability of PCA-DR in a realistic sea environment.

Frogman Self-Navigation Method Based on Virtual Transponder Array and Dead Reckoning

“…In the proposed method, first we only throw one actual underwater transponder temporarily in the frogman's entry point to communicate with the interrogator carried by the frogman to obtain the acoustic ranging information between them. Then, according to the principle of DR navigation algorithm [29], the frogman's movement vectors can be calculated with the aid of the output data measured by the frogman-wearing IMU and DVL. And then, combined with the geometric relationship between the frogman's movement track and the actual single transponder, at least two virtual transponders will be constructed by translating the frogman's movement vectors.…”

Review on Unmanned Underwater Robotics, Structure Designs, Materials, Sensors, Actuators, and Navigation Control

“…is type of methodology is known as dead reckoning [59]. is type of navigation system corresponds to the research written by Itzik Klein and Roee Diamant; they developed a system that estimates the trajectory travelled by a water vehicle that moves freely in the direction of the marine currents [60]. Because these robots work very closely to the sea surface, they are easily susceptible to orientation change, which creates problems in the path.…”

Motion Estimation of Underwater Platforms Using Impulse Responses From the Seafloor

“…Almost three quarters of the Earth's surface is covered by water but only a small part of the underwater environment has been explored [1], [2], [3]. Nowadays, underwater exploration missions rely on the use of autonomous platforms whose navigation system is crucial for their accurate operation [4], [5]. The task of the navigation system is to obtain the platform location and velocity as it moves through the body of water [5].…”

“…Nowadays, underwater exploration missions rely on the use of autonomous platforms whose navigation system is crucial for their accurate operation [4], [5]. The task of the navigation system is to obtain the platform location and velocity as it moves through the body of water [5]. The navigation can be based on a variety of motion estimation techniques by integrating the motion estimates into the underwater platform trajectory with a navigation algorithm [6].…”