Towards In-Situ Calibration of Gyro and Doppler Navigation Sensors for Precision Underwater Vehicle Navigation

J.C. Kinsey and L.L. Whitcomb. Proceedings of the 2002 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, pages 4016-4023, May 2002, Washington DC.

This paper addresses a practical problem arising in the calibration of bottom-lock Doppler sonar for the navigation of underwater robot vehicles. Employing a least-squares method, the rotational alignment offset between a bottom-lock Doppler sonar and a north-seeking gyroscope can be experimentally determined using sensors commonly deployed with a vehicle in the field. It requires sensor values from the vehicle's Doppler sonar and 3-axis gyroscope, and absolute vehicle position fixes from a long-baseline or short-baseline acoustic navigation system. The performance of the calibration method is evaluated with simulated Doppler data possessing measurement noise typical of that found in actual in-water vehicle sensor data.