Planar SLAM under a semi-submersible offshore platform with an unmanned surface vehicle

This paper addresses relative navigation of unmanned surface vehicles (USVs) under marine floating structures where GPS signals are severely deteriorated or not available. An onboard 3D lidar collects point cloud of the structures and planar surfaces of their column structures are detected and used as landmark features in the framework of simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM). The feasibility of the proposed method has been demonstrated in field experiments.