AUV range-only localization and mapping: Observer design and experimental results

This paper addresses the localization problem of an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle using relative range measurements to stationary beacons whose locations are also unknown. We propose an observer that under observability-like assumptions drives the estimation errors to a small neighborhood of zero (whose size depends on the noise and disturbances). The observer is designed by combining the concepts of minimum energy estimators applied to continuous processes with discrete measurements (not necessarily with a fixed sampling time), adaptive multiple models estimators, and simultaneous localization and mapping techniques. We also combine the proposed solution with a projection filter that significantly improves the performance. Experimental results with the Medusa robotic vehicle are presented and discussed.