A Low-Cost, High Rate Motion Software Sensor System Based on Novel Data Fusion for Unmanned Surface Vehicle Navigation and Oceanographic Instrumentation Motion Correction

One of the major challenges in the navigation of underwater vehicles is obtaining precise and reliable positioning updates. Dead-Reckoning aided with Doppler velocity measurement has been, and remains, the most common method for underwater navigation for small vehicles. DR uses a set of navigation instruments to estimate the position of the vehicle by integrating the body-fixed velocity, accelerations, and angular rates with respect to time. Instrument error and bias lead to position error that increases exponentially with time. Thus, current DR systems require frequent position recalibrations. The Global Positioning System (GPS) provides measurements of geodetic coordinates for air and surface vehicles and it is often used to correct positioning error. However, underwater vehicles cannot use GPS for inflight navigation because GPS signals only penetrate a few centimeters past the air-sea interface. Thus, underwater vehicle navigation systems are limited to periodic position update from the GPS when they surface and extend an antenna through the air-sea interface. Standard GPS receivers are unable to provide the rate or precision required when used on a small vessel such as an Unmanned Surface Vehicle (USV). To overcome this, a low cost high rate motion measurement system for an USV with underwater and oceanographic purposes is proposed. The proposed onboard system for the USV consists of an Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) with accelerometers and rate gyros, a GPS receiver, a flux-gate compass, a roll and tilt sensor and an ADCP. Interfacing all the sensors proved rather challenging because of their different characteristics. Some of the instruments have digital output (Compass/ADCP/GPS) while others have an analog output (IMU/tilt sensor). The proposed data fusion technique integrates the IMU, GPS receiver, flux-gate compass as well as tilt sensor and develops an embeddable software package, using real time data fusion methods, for a USV to aid in navigation and control as well as controlling an onboard Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler (ADCP). While ADCPs non-intrusively measure water flow, they suffer from the inability to distinguish between motions in the water column and self-motion. Thus, the vessel motion contamination needs to be removed to analyze the data and the system developed in this text provides the motion measurements and processing to accomplish this task.