AUSLUN: A Fixed-Hover UAV--USV System for GNSS-Denied Maritime Search and Navigation

2026-06-29

AI Summary

This study addresses the challenges of long-range target search and global navigation for unmanned surface vehicles (USVs) in GNSS-denied environments by proposing a shore-based UAV–USV cooperative system. The UAV hovers as a dynamic navigation anchor, achieving self-localization via visual-inertial odometry, while innovatively shifting perceptual motion from body translation to zoom-enabled gimbal scanning. A closed-loop navigation framework is established through polygonal annular scanning, modality-based direction-of-arrival and ranging localization, and a visual-loss recovery mechanism. The system integrates laser and datalink ranging, a gated recurrent estimator, and adaptive yaw-boundary search planning. Simulations and field experiments demonstrate that adaptive scanning significantly reduces redundant coverage, the gated recurrent estimator outperforms non-recurrent baselines, and the complete maritime mission validates end-to-end feasibility—from target search and navigation guidance to recovery from visual failure.

Abstract

Global navigation satellite system (GNSS) denial can prevent an unmanned surface vehicle (USV) from both finding a distant vessel and maintaining a globally referenced approach. This paper presents AUSLUN (Automatic UAV Search, Localization, and USV Navigation), a fixed-hover aerial-surface system that uses a coastal unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), which estimates its own pose through visual-inertial odometry (VIO), as a long-range sensing and navigation anchor. The central design shifts sensing motion from UAV translation to a zoom pod and closes the loop through three coupled elements: polygon-aware annular pod scanning, modality-aware bearing-range localization, and target-relative USV guidance with visual-loss recovery. The same gated recursive estimator uses laser range for the non-cooperative target and datalink range for the cooperative USV. Search-planning simulations show that the adaptive yaw bounds reduce scan time and redundant coverage relative to a matched fixed-sector scan, and GPS-referenced field data show that the gated recursive estimator outperforms non-recursive baselines in localization accuracy. An integrated maritime mission further demonstrates the complete search-to-navigation sequence, including a deliberately triggered visual-loss recovery. These results establish the feasibility and operating boundary of fixed-hover UAV assistance for stationary-target approach in coastal GNSS-denied environments. The source code and a video demonstration are publicly available at https://github.com/xirhxq/pod_search and https://youtu.be/S-5RkJs35JI.

Problem

• GNSS-denied
• maritime search
• USV navigation
• stationary-target approach
• coastal environment

Innovation

• fixed-hover UAV
• visual-inertial odometry
• gated recursive estimator
• modality-aware localization
• GNSS-denied navigation