Predictive Modeling in AUV Navigation: A Perspective from Kalman Filtering

TL;DR

This paper introduces a Kalman filtering-based framework for AUV navigation that improves localization, trajectory prediction, and search operations during communication loss by fusing acoustic data with predictive modeling.

Contribution

It presents a novel integration of TDOA acoustic measurements with Kalman filtering to enhance AUV localization and search capabilities during communication disruptions.

Findings

Significantly improved localization accuracy over TDOA-only methods.

Enhanced trajectory stability and robustness to noise.

Effective search-and-recovery predictions during communication loss.

Abstract

We present a safety-oriented framework for autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) that improves localization accuracy, enhances trajectory prediction, and supports efficient search operations during communication loss. Acoustic signals emitted by the AUV are detected by a network of fixed buoys, which compute Time-Difference-of-Arrival (TDOA) range-difference measurements serving as position observations. These observations are subsequently fused with a Kalman-based prediction model to obtain continuous, noise-robust state estimates. The combined method achieves significantly better localization precision and trajectory stability than TDOA-only baselines. Beyond real-time tracking, our framework offers targeted search-and-recovery capability by predicting post-disconnection motion and explicitly modeling uncertainty growth. The search module differentiates between continued navigation and propulsion failure, allowing search resources to be deployed toward the most probable recovery region. Our framework fuses multi-buoy acoustic data with Kalman filtering and uncertainty propagation to maintain navigation accuracy and yield robust search-region definitions during communication loss.