Computer Engineering Commons^™

Towards Autonomous Localization Of An Underwater Drone, Nathan Sfard

Master's Theses

Autonomous vehicle navigation is a complex and challenging task. Land and aerial vehicles often use highly accurate GPS sensors to localize themselves in their environments. These sensors are ineffective in underwater environments due to signal attenuation. Autonomous underwater vehicles utilize one or more of the following approaches for successful localization and navigation: inertial/dead-reckoning, acoustic signals, and geophysical data. This thesis examines autonomous localization in a simulated environment for an OpenROV Underwater Drone using a Kalman Filter. This filter performs state estimation for a dead reckoning system exhibiting an additive error in location measurements. We evaluate the accuracy of this Kalman …

Ultrasonic Shark-Tag Locator System For Iver2 Auv, Nathaniel Garcia

Computer Engineering

The purpose of this project is to develop a system for tracking an ultrasonic underwater transmitter that can be integrated into an IVER2 AUV to allow it to follow and monitor tagged sharks in the ocean for scientific research.

The system consists of a four main components including a shark-tag, two hydrophones, a filter/amplifier & threshold detector circuit, and a microcontroller.

This project, while not completing field testing and integration with the IVER2, is a proof of concept of a system that utilizes passive sonar to determine a bearing from the system to a shark-tag transmitter. Additionally, it devised several …