Abstract
The paper deals with the distributed acoustic localization of teams of autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) and proposes a novel algorithm, real-time ray-tracing (RT2), for evaluating the distance between any pair of AUVs in the team. The technique, based on a modified formulation of the non-linear sound-ray propagation laws, allows efficient handling of the distorted and reflected acoustic ray paths. The proposed algorithm can be easily implemented on-board of low-cost AUVs, requiring the presence, on each vehicle, of an acoustic modem and a pair of look-up tables, a-priori built on the basis of the assumed knowledge of the depth-dependent sound velocity profile. On such a basis, every AUV can compute its distance w.r.t. to any other neighbor team member, through time-of-flight measurements and the exchanges of depth information only.
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This research was partially funded by EU FP7 project “CO3AUVs: Cognitive Cooperative Control of Autonomous Underwater Vehicles”, under Grant Agreement n. 23 1378.
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Casalino, G., Caiti, A., Turetta, A. et al. RT2: real-time ray-tracing for underwater range evaluation. Intel Serv Robotics 4, 259–270 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11370-011-0093-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11370-011-0093-8