• Journal of Advanced Marine Engineering and Technology
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• v.39 no.5
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• pp.522-526
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• 2015

Generally, underwater unmanned vehicle have adopted an inertial navigation system (INS), dead reckoning (DR), acoustic navigation and geophysical navigation techniques as the navigation method because GPS does not work in deep underwater environment. Even if the tactical inertial sensor can provide very detail measurement during long operation time, it is not suitable to use the tactical inertial sensor for small size and low cost UUV because the tactical inertial sensor is expensive and large. One alternative to INS is attitude heading reference system (AHRS) with the micro-machined electro mechanical system (MEMS) inertial sensor because of MEMS inertial sensor's small size and low power requirement. A cost effective and small size attitude heading reference system (AHRS) which incorporates measurements from 3-axis micro-machined electro mechanical system (MEMS) gyroscopes, accelerometers, and 3-axis magnetometers has been developed to provide a complete attitude solution for UUV. The AHRS based MEMS overcome many problems that have inhibited the adoption of inertial system for small UUV such as cost, size and power consumption. Several evaluation experiments were carried out for the validation of the developed AHRS's function and these experiments results are presented. Experiments results prove the fact that the developed MEMS AHRS satisfied the required specification.

• Journal of Ocean Engineering and Technology
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• v.19 no.2 s.63
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• pp.74-81
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• 2005

A 3-D localization method of an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) has been developed, which can solve the limitations oj the conventional localization, such as LBL or SBL that reduces the flexibility and availability of the AUV. The system is composed of a mother ship (small unmanned marine prober) on the surface of the water and an unmanned underwater vehicle in the water. The mother ship is equipped with a digital compass and a GPS for position information, and an extended Kalman filter is used for position estimation. For the localization of the AUV, we used only non-inertial sensors, such as a digital compass, a pressure sensor, a clinometer, and ultrasonic sensors. From the orientation and velocity information, a priori position of the AUV is estimated by applying the dead reckoning method. Based on the extended Kalman filter algorithm, a posteriori position of the AUV is, then, updated by using the distance between the AUV and a mother ship on the surface of the water, together with the depth information from the pressure sensor.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.20 no.10
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• pp.1044-1050
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• 2014

Robots used for pipe inspection have been studied for a long time and many mobile mechanisms have been proposed to achieve inspection tasks within pipelines. Localization is an important factor for an inpipe robot to perform successful autonomous operation. However, sensors such as GPS and beacons cannot be used because of the unique characteristics of inpipe conditions. In this paper, an inpipe localization algorithm based on elbow detection is presented. By processing the projected marker images of laser pointers and the attitude and heading data from an IMU, the odometer module of the robot determines whether the robot is within a straight pipe or an elbow and minimizes the integration error in the orientation. In addition, an off-line positioning algorithm has been performed with forward and backward estimation and Procrustes analysis. The experimental environment has consisted of several straight pipes and elbows, and a map of the pipeline has been constructed as the result.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Navigation and Port Research Conference
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• v.1
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• pp.251-256
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• 2006

In the work package 'Integrated Positioning' of the research project NAVIO (Pedestrian Navigation Systems in Combined Indoor/Outdoor Environements) we are dealing with the navigation and guidance of visitors of our University. Thereby start points are public transport stops in the surroundings of the Vienna University of Technology and the user of the system should be guided to certain office rooms or persons. For the position determination of the user different location sensors are employed, i.e., for outdoor positioning GPS and dead reckoning sensors such as a digital compass and gyro for heading determination and accelerometers for the determination of the travelled distance as well as a barometric pressure sensor for altitude determination and for indoor areas location determination using WiFi fingerprinting. All sensors and positioning methods are combined and integrated using a Kalman filter approach. Then an optimal estimate of the current location of the user is obtained using the filter. To perform an adequate weighting of the sensors in the stochastic filter model, the sensor characteristics and their performance was investigated in several tests. The tests were performed in different environments either with free satellite visibility or in urban canyons as well as inside of buildings. The tests have shown that it is possible to determine the user's location continuously with the required precision and that the selected sensors provide a good performance and high reliability. Selected tests results and our approach will be presented in the paper.