Towards cooperative localization of an acoustic pinger

This paper tackles the problem of localization of an acoustic pinger by a team of cooperative marine robots. A pinger, whose location is unknown, intermittently emits an acoustic ping which is sensed by hydrophones mounted on marine robots. In addition to position, the instant of emission is unknown. A team of robots carrying a total of four hydrophones is therefore (theoretically) required to estimate the position without ambiguity. The precision of the estimate and the uncertainty critically depend on the position of the hydrophones. In order to obtain the best possible estimation, we explore the possibility of using a cooperative method that leads the robots to points where the overall observability is improved.