Underwater Terrain Positioning Method Based on Least Squares Estimation for AUV

To achieve accurate positioning of autonomous underwater vehicles, an appropriate underwater terrain database storage format for underwater terrain-matching positioning is established using multi-beam data as underwater terrainmatching data. An underwater terrain interpolation error compensation method based on fractional Brownian motion is proposed for defects of normal terrain interpolation, and an underwater terrain-matching positioning method based on least squares estimation（LSE） is proposed for correlation analysis of topographic features. The Fisher method is introduced as a secondary criterion for pseudo localization appearing in a topographic features flat area, effectively reducing the impact of pseudo positioning points on matching accuracy and improving the positioning accuracy of terrain flat areas. Simulation experiments based on electronic chart and multi-beam sea trial data show that drift errors of an inertial navigation system can be corrected effectively using the proposed method. The positioning accuracy and practicality are high, satisfying the requirement of underwater accurate positioning.

Localization and mapping algorithm based on Lidar-IMU-Camera fusion

Positioning and mapping technology is a difficult and hot topic in autonomous driving environment sensing systems.In a complex traffic environment,the signal of the Global Navigation Satellite System(GNSS)will be blocked,leading to inaccurate vehicle positioning.To ensure the security of automatic electric campus vehicles,this study is based on the Lightweight and Ground-Optimized Lidar Odometry and Mapping on Variable Terrain(LEGO-LOAM)algorithm with a monocular vision system added.An algorithm framework based on Lidar-IMU-Camera(Lidar means light detection and ranging)fusion was proposed.A lightweight monocular vision odometer model was used,and the LEGO-LOAM system was employed to initialize monocular vision.The visual odometer information was taken as the initial value of the laser odometer.At the back-end opti9mization phase error state,the Kalman filtering fusion algorithm was employed to fuse the visual odometer and LEGO-LOAM system for positioning.The visual word bag model was applied to perform loopback detection.Taking the test results into account,the laser radar loopback detection was further optimized,reducing the accumulated positioning error.The real car experiment results showed that our algorithm could improve the mapping quality and positioning accuracy in the campus environment.The Lidar-IMU-Camera algorithm framework was verified on the Hong Kong city dataset UrbanNav.Compared with the LEGO-LOAM algorithm,the results show that the proposed algorithm can effectively reduce map drift,improve map resolution,and output more accurate driving trajectory information.

Obstacle avoidance for a hexapod robot in unknown environment

Obstacle avoidance is quite an important issue in the field of legged robotic applications, such as rescuing and detecting in complicated environment. Most related researchers focused on the legged robot’s gait generation after ssuming that obstacles have been detected and the walking path has been given. In this paper we propose and validate a novel obstacle avoidance framework for a six-legged walking robot Hexapod-III in unknown environment. Throughout the paper we highlight three themes: (1) The terrain map modeling and the obstacle detection; (2) the obstacle avoidance path planning method; (3) motion planning for the legged robot. Concretely, a novel geometric feature grid map (GFGM) is proposed to describe the terrain. Based on the GFGM, the obstacle detection algorithm is presented. Then the concepts of virtual obstacles and safe conversion pose are introduced. Virtual obstacles restrict the robot to walk on the detection terrain. A safe path based on Bezier curves, passing through safe conversion poses, is obtained by minimizing a penalty function taking into account the path length subjected to obstacle avoidance. Thirdly, motion planning for the legged robot to walk along the generated path is discussed in detail. At last, we apply the proposed framework to the Hexapod-III robot. The experimental result shows that our methodology allows the robot to walk safely without encountering with any obstacles in unknown environment.