Predictive Modeling in AUV Navigation: A Perspective from Kalman Filtering

2026-03-28

AI Summary

This study addresses the challenges of degraded positioning accuracy, unreliable trajectory prediction, and low search efficiency for autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) during communication outages. To overcome these issues, the authors propose a unified state estimation framework that integrates time-difference-of-arrival (TDOA) acoustic measurements from multiple buoys with Kalman filtering. The approach explicitly distinguishes between normal navigation and propulsion-failure modes, enabling high-confidence trajectory forecasting and search region generation after loss of contact through rigorous uncertainty propagation. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method significantly outperforms a TDOA-only baseline in terms of localization accuracy, trajectory stability, and search area precision, thereby substantially improving the recoverability of lost AUVs.

Abstract

We present a safety-oriented framework for autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) that improves localization accuracy, enhances trajectory prediction, and supports efficient search operations during communication loss. Acoustic signals emitted by the AUV are detected by a network of fixed buoys, which compute Time-Difference-of-Arrival (TDOA) range-difference measurements serving as position observations. These observations are subsequently fused with a Kalman-based prediction model to obtain continuous, noise-robust state estimates. The combined method achieves significantly better localization precision and trajectory stability than TDOA-only baselines. Beyond real-time tracking, our framework offers targeted search-and-recovery capability by predicting post-disconnection motion and explicitly modeling uncertainty growth. The search module differentiates between continued navigation and propulsion failure, allowing search resources to be deployed toward the most probable recovery region. Our framework fuses multi-buoy acoustic data with Kalman filtering and uncertainty propagation to maintain navigation accuracy and yield robust search-region definitions during communication loss.

Problem

• AUV navigation
• localization accuracy
• trajectory prediction
• communication loss
• search-and-recovery

Innovation

• Kalman filtering
• TDOA localization
• uncertainty propagation
• AUV navigation
• search-and-recovery