Advances in In Situ Alignment Calibration of Doppler and High/Low-end Attitude Sensors for Underwater Vehicle Navigation: Theory and Experimental Evaluation

This paper reports the development and comparative performance evaluation, using laboratory and at-sea field data, of new methods for the problem of in situ calibration of the alignment rotation matrix between Doppler sonar velocity sensors and attitude sensors arising in the navigation of underwater vehicles. Most previously reported solutions to this alignment calibration problem require the use of absolute navigation fixes of the underwater vehicle, thus requiring additional navigation sensors and/or beacons to be located externally and apart from the underwater vehicle. We report four novel alignment calibration methods employing only internal vehicle navigation sensors for velocity, acceleration, attitude, and depth. We report the results of comparative analysis of the performance of these new methods and a previously reported method with a navigation laboratory and at-sea field data. Laboratory data were obtained with the Johns Hopkins University JHU remotely operated underwater vehicle in the JHU Hydrodynamic Test Facility. At-sea field data were obtained from deep-water survey missions of the Sentry autonomous underwater vehicle conducted in March, 2011 in the Kermadec Arc in the Southern Pacific Ocean. In addition, we report a comparative experimental evaluation of several recently reported calibration methods when employing low-cost microelectromechanical system attitude sensors. In all these cases, the results reveal consistent differences in performance of the various methods when analyzed on navigation data from several different vehicle dives.