• Ocean and Polar Research
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• v.27 no.3
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• pp.335-339
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• 2005

The underwater positioning system is important in interpreting data that are acquired from towing vehicles such as the deep-sea camera (DSC) system. Currently, several acoustic positioning systems such as long baseline (LBL), short baseline (SBL), and ultra short baseline (USBL), are used for underwater positioning. The accurate position of DSC, however, could not be determined in a R/V Onnuri unequipped with any of these underwater positioning systems. As an alternative, the DSC position was estimated based on the topography of towing track and cable length in the cruises before 1999. The great uncertainties, however, were found in the areas of flat bottom topography. In the 2003 and 2004 cruises these uncertainties were reduced by calculating the position of DSC with the cable length and seafloor depth below the vessel. The Japanese cruises for Mn-nodule used a similar estimation method for the DSC positioning system with a CTD sensor. Although the latter can provide better information for the position of DSC, the USBL underwater positioning system is strongly recommended for establishing better positioning of DSC and other towing devices.

• The Journal of Korea Robotics Society
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.173-183
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• 2017

This paper proposes an integrated positioning system to localize a moving object in the shadow-area that exists in the water tank. The new water tank for underwater robots is constructed to evaluate the navigation performance of underwater vehicles. Several sensors are integrated in the water tank to provide the position information of the underwater vehicles. However there are some areas where the vehicle localization becomes very poor since the very limited sensors such as sonar and depth sensors are effective in underwater environment. Also there are many disturbances at sonar data. To reduce these disturbances, an extended Kalman filter has been adopted in this research. To localize the underwater vehicles under the hostile situations, a SVR (Support Vector Regression) has been systematically applied for estimating the position stochastically. To demonstrate the performance of the proposed algorithm (an extended Kalman filter + SVR analysis), a new UI (User Interface) has been developed.

• Journal of Ocean Engineering and Technology
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• v.36 no.5
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• pp.340-352
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• 2022

This article presents a modeling method for the uncorrelated measurement error of the ultra-short baseline (USBL) acoustic positioning system for aiding navigation of underwater vehicles. The Mahalanobis distance (MD) and principal component analysis are applied to decorrelate the errors of USBL measurements, which are correlated in the x- and y-directions and vary according to the relative direction and distance between a reference station and the underwater vehicles. The proposed method can decouple the radial-direction error and angular direction error from each USBL measurement, where the former and latter are independent and dependent, respectively, of the distance between the reference station and the vehicle. With the decorrelation of the USBL errors along the trajectory of the vehicles in every time step, the proposed method can reduce the threshold of the outlier decision level. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method, simulation studies were performed with motion data obtained from a field experiment involving an autonomous underwater vehicle and USBL signals generated numerically by matching the specifications of a specific USBL with the data of a global positioning system. The simulations indicated that the navigation system is more robust in rejecting outliers of the USBL measurements than conventional ones. In addition, it was shown that the erroneous estimation of the navigation system after a long USBL blackout can converge to the true states using the MD of the USBL measurements. The navigation systems using the uncorrelated error model of the USBL, therefore, can effectively eliminate USBL outliers without loss of uncontaminated signals.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Navigation
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.99-105
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• 1993

Underwater acoustic positioning systems have been extensively used not only in surface position fixing but also in underwater position fixing. Recently, these systems have been applied in the field of installation and underwater inspection offshore platforms etc. But in these systems are included the fixing errors as results of a signal with noise and irregular motion of vessel by ocean waves. In this paper to improve the accuracy of the position fixing a Kalman filter is applied to the short baseline(SBL) acoustic positioning system. The optimal position obtained by the Kalman filter is compared with the raw position and it is confirmed that the former is more accurate than the latter.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Fisheries and Ocean Technology
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• v.29 no.2
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• pp.109-116
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• 1993

Underwater acoustic positioning systems have been extensively used not only in surface position fixing but also in underwater position fixing. Recently, these systems have been applied in the field of installation and underwater inspection of offshore platforms etc. But in these systems are included the fixing errors as results of a signal with additive noise and irregular motion of vessel by ocean waves. To improve the accuracy of the position fixing a Kalman filter is applied to the supershort baseline (SSBL) acoustic positioning system with beacon mode in noise conditions. The position data obtained by the Kalman filter is compared with raw position data and it is confirmed in the simulation that the former is more accurate than the latter. And an indicator monitoring the filtering effect is described while ship's moving.

• Proceedings of the Korea Committee for Ocean Resources and Engineering Conference
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• 2003.05a
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• pp.89-93
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• 2003

The Korea Research Institute of Ships and Ocean Engineering (KRISO), the ocean engineering branch of KORDI, has designed and manufactured a model of an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) to test underwater docking. This paper introduces the AUV model, ASUM, equipped with a visual servo control system to dock into an underwater station with a camera and motion sensors. To make a visual servoing AUV, this paper implemented the visual servo control system designed with an augmented state equation, which was composed of the optical flow model of a camera and the equation of the AUV's motion. The system design and the hardware configuration of ASUM are presented in this paper. A small long baseline acoustic positioning system was developed to monitor and record the AUV's position for the experiment in the Ocean Engineering Basin of KRISO, KORDI. ASUM recognizes the target position by processing the captured image for the lights, which are installed around the end of the cone-type entrance of the duct. Unfortunately, experiments are not yet conducted when we write this article. The authors will present the results for the docking test of the AUV in near future.

• Journal of Ocean Engineering and Technology
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• v.34 no.6
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• pp.475-480
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• 2020

Underwater operating platforms face difficulties regarding power supply and communications. To overcome these difficulties, this study proposes a hybrid surface and underwater vehicle (HSUV) and presents the development of the platform, control algorithms, and results of field tests. The HSUV is capable of supplying reliable power to the unmanned underwater vehicle (UUV) and obtaining data in real time by using a tether cable between the UUV and the unmanned surface vehicle (USV). The HSUV uses global positioning system (GPS) and ultra-short base line sensors to determine the relative location of the UUV. Way point (WP) and dynamic positioning (DP) algorithms were developed to enable the HSUV to perform unmanned exploration. After reaching the target point using the WP algorithm, the DP algorithm enables USV to maintain position while withstanding environmental disturbances. To ensure the navigation performance at sea, performance tests of GPS, attitude/heading reference system, and side scan sonar were conducted. Based on these results, manual operation, WP, and DP tests were conducted at sea. WP and DP test results and side scan sonar images during the sea trials are presented.

• International Journal of Ocean System Engineering
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• v.3 no.1
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• pp.44-48
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• 2013

This paper describes the design and implementation of a practical underwater positioning system, which is applicable for shallow water depth conditions. In this paper, two strategies are used to enhance the navigation performance. First, a low-cost acoustic-ranging-based precise navigation solution for shallow water is designed. Then, the outlier rejection algorithm is introduced by designing a velocity gate. The acoustic-ranging-based navigation is implemented by modifying the long base line solution. To enhance the tracking precision, the outlier rejection algorithm is introduced. The performance of the developed approach is evaluated using experiments. The results demonstrate that precise shallow water depth navigation can be implemented using the suggested approaches.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.22 no.3
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• pp.352-361
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• 2021

An underwater positioning method that can be applied to structures for underwater construction is being developed at the Korea Institute of Ocean Science and Technology. The method uses an extended Kalman filter (EKF) based on an inertial navigation system for precise and continuous position estimation. The observation matrix was configured to be variable in order to apply asynchronous measured sensor data in the correction step of the EKF. A Doppler velocity logger (DVL) can acquire signals only when attached to the bottom of an underwater structure, and it is difficult to install and recover. Therefore, a complex sensor device for underwater structure attachment was developed without a DVL in consideration of an underwater construction environment, installation location, system operation convenience, etc.. Its performance was verified through a water tank test. The results are the measured underwater position using an ultra-short baseline, the estimated position using only a position vector, and the estimated position using position/velocity vectors. The results were compared and evaluated using the circular error probability (CEP). As a result, the CEP of the USBL alone was 0.02 m, the CEP of the position estimation with only the position vector corrected was 3.76 m, and the CEP of the position estimation with the position and velocity vectors corrected was 0.06 m. Through this research, it was confirmed that stable underwater positioning can be carried out using asynchronous sensors without a DVL.

• Journal of Positioning, Navigation, and Timing
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• v.5 no.2
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• pp.97-107
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• 2016

Military Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) is utilized to search a mine under the sea. This paper presents design and performance verification of real-time hybrid navigation system for AUV. The navigation system uses Doppler Velocity Log (DVL) integration method to correct INS error in underwater. When the AUV is floated on the water, the accumulated error of navigation algorithm is corrected using position/velocity of GPS. The navigation algorithm is verified using 6 Degree Of Freedom (DOF) simulation, Program In the Loop Simulation (PILS). Finally, the experiments are performed in real sea environment to prove the reliability of real-time hybrid navigation algorithm.