GEOMAGNETIC LOCALIZATION OF UNDERWATER VEHICLES BASED ON MATCHING ALGORITHM

Abstract

The trend of ocean exploration puts forward higher requirements for automatic vehicles, while navigation system has been the development constraint for them. “Nature” reported that some sea turtles respond to geomagnetic map for their localization. The actual mechanism is not clear, but it offers a sign for underwater navigation research. Matching algorithms can be used for this purpose, which can match the path followed by the vehicle on a map. The traditional iterative closest point (ICP) algorithm for image registration combined with Inertial Navigation System (INS) can be used for location determination. This report emphasizes on how to modify and improve ICP algorithm according to underwater geomagnetic localization. The algorithm’s applicability is concluded mathematically from the localization algorithms. Then the simulation experiments are carried out, which are based on real geomagnetic data, to show the validation of this algorithm and good results are obtained. The simulation is done in MATLAB 7.4.0. The geomagnetic data used is from the standard WMM2005 (World Magnetic Map) of January 1, 2009, 100m below sea-level.