Fusing Multiple Navigation Solutions for Autonomous Underwater Vehicles

Continued improvements in Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) navigation is required to enable long term deployments. Attempts to address GPS-denied underwater operation have lead to a wide variety of navigation techniques whose suitability for a specific mission is highly dependent on the environment, concept of operations and sensor payload. In this paper we introduce a robust navigation system, able to fuse a wide range of sensors and aiding sources, allowing the vehicle to precisely ascertain its position and navigate the complexities of the surrounding environment. The modular multi-platform architecture proposed in this paper, based on two main inter-connected components, individually implemented as standalone software module, allows to define sensor-agnostic interfaces used to interact with the rest of the system. Preliminary experimental results obtained in real-time during in water campaigns, validate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.