Long-baseline acoustic localization of the Seaglider underwater glider

Abstract

This paper describes a long-baseline underwater acoustic localization system that was developed to provide three-dimensional position information for the Seaglider underwater vehicle. The accurate inertial position of the glider can be used to estimate performance characteristics and to validate novel motion control and path planning strategies in future experiments. The system consists of three acoustic transponders that are placed at known locations at the surface of the water. An extended Kalman filter with RTS smoothing was used to obtain filtered estimates of the states. The filtering methods have been tested both in simulations and in field experiments.