Predictive Modeling in AUV Navigation: A Perspective from Kalman Filtering
For AUV operators, the framework enhances safety and recovery efficiency during communication loss, but the method is an incremental application of Kalman filtering to a known problem.
The paper presents a Kalman-filter-based framework for AUV navigation that fuses TDOA acoustic measurements with predictive modeling to improve localization accuracy and trajectory stability, and enables efficient search-and-recovery during communication loss by predicting post-disconnection motion and modeling uncertainty growth.
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.