Active Range-Only beacon localization for AUV homing

This paper presents a solution to the 3D Range-Only beacon localization problem using a Sum of Gaussians (SOG) filter together with an Active Localization method, which is based on the minimization of the beacon position uncertainty, in order to ensure the problem observability and a fast convergence. The method is applied to autonomously locate a subsea panel and home to it in order to establish visual contact to later launch a visual servoing based docking task. The method is demonstrated through field experiments in a harbor environment with an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) including Ultra-Short Baseline (USBL) ground truth information.