Navigational data fusion in the Ocean Explorer autonomous underwater vehicles

A data-fusion algorithm is implemented in the Ocean Explorer series autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) in order to robustly combine navigational sensor information which is asynchronously available, and which can have arbitrary degrees of sensor accuracy. The algorithm requires minimal information about the nature or distribution of errors in the sensor data. A heuristic hierarchical “fuzzy” weighting algorithm is used to combine different navigation sensors. The data-fusion algorithm is explicitly described, and at-sea data collected by the AUVs is presented which verify the algorithmic veracity