Range-based navigation of AUVs operating near ship hulls

In-water ship hull inspection is essential for both routine preventative maintenance as well as for timely detection and neutralization of limpet mines planted on military and commercial vessels. While a host of inspection methods have been proposed for this task, Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) are particularly well-suited for such missions as they require neither constant human supervision nor a restrictive tether as do Remotely Operated Vehicles (ROVs). MIT and Bluefin Robotics have jointly developed a Hovering AUV (HAUV) for the inspection of ship hulls and other submerged marine structures which has been successfully demonstrated to achieve a coverage rate on the order of 700m2/hour with centimeter-scale resolution for a variety of hull types. AUV navigation often involves dead reckoning based on velocity measurements from an acoustic Doppler Velocity Log (DVL) sensor. As this strategy is inherently susceptible to drift, related efforts seek to generate vehicle position updates through either Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) or the use of external sensor networks. In this work we propose a unique localization approach which relies on range measurements taken to surfaces of known curvature.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Mechanical Engineering.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2007

Author dc:creator

• Kokko, Michael A. (Michael Andrew)

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Franz S. Hover and John J. Leonard.

• Mechanical Engineering.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/40292

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/40292