Underwater Acoustic Localization

With the advancement of the field of underwater robotics, the amount of autonomy embodied in the vehicles themselves have considerably increased while making it possible to build and deploy swarms of small autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs). Apart from the many environmental and mechanical challenges encountered in the underwater domain, the swarming paradigm demands the need for each vehicle to be aware of the positions of at least its near neighbours. The Serafina AUV project which was initiated with the goal of developing swarming technology for the small and highly agile Serafina class AUVs requires a localization system which could cope with the dynamic and fast changing vehicle configurations while being small, reliable, robust, and energy efficient and not dependent on pre-deployed acoustic beacons. The acoustical relative localisation system proposed here uses hyperbolic and spherical localization concepts and provides each vehicle with the azimuth, range and heading of its near neighbors.