Navigation System for MACÁBOT an Autonomous Surface Vehicles Using GPS Aided Strapdown Inertial Navigation System

Abstract

In this work the design, implementation and
real-time tests of a Navigation System (NS) for the
Autonomous Surface Vehicle (ASV) MACÁBOT is
presented. The ASV MACÁBOT represents a versatile
platform to perform several tasks in the marine
environment, such as; ports maintenance, marine
productive ecosystems studies and bathymetries. The NS is
in charge of determining accurately the position, velocity
and attitude of the ASV. It represents a fundamental
component to autonomously carry out any of the
aforementioned activities. In this work, the NS is developed
based on a Global Positioning System Aided Strap-Down
Inertial Navigation System (GPS-A-SDINS) using an
Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) sensor fusion algorithm
(SFA). In addition, to provide an adaptive approach to the
SFA tuning a Fuzzy Inference System (FIS) is implemented.
The NS was implemented using Robotic Operating System
(ROS) benefiting from the advantages of heterogeneity,
integration and hardware abstraction. The NS was tested in
real time using the ASV-MACÁBOT in wet tests, showing
satisfactory performance in both position and velocity
estimates. In addition to these tests, simulations of GPS
outages were carried out with the registered data to evaluate
the performance of the NS in such cases.