Sonar and vision based navigation schemes for autonomous underwater vehicles

In this paper, autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) navigation schemes are proposed using forward looking sonar (FLS) and charged coupled device (CCD) camera for near bottom applications. Scans obtained from the onboard FLS are processed using a feature extraction technique discussed in the paper to extract stable point features in the environment. A technique is also proposed for AUVs to track optical features. Through field trials conducted using the test-bed vehicles NTU-UAV and the Twin-Burger2, the performance of the algorithms proposed are analyzed. The paper discusses the above-mentioned individual sensor capabilities and drawbacks in AUV navigation.